Hello I will be your compare for the evening. Over there is my faithful assistant Contrast who is on hand to point out what a truly terrible pun this has been.
Last night the video to support the Shakira single "Can't Remember to Forget You" featuring Rihanna was released and can be viewed here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3mP3mJDL2k
Obviously featuring both Rihanna and Shakira this is something of a sexy video although I personally think it leans towards satire. Both Rihanna and Shakira are cast as sort of 1920/30's movie starlets constantly trying to outdo each other in the sexy stakes for screen time. In case you failed to pick up on this theme of competition between the two contrasting stars most of the action involves Rihanna and Shakira writhing about on a mattress with contrasting black and white stripes. When Shakira sings her part Rihanna turns her back on her and vice versa.
Although Rihanna puts up a spirited fight Shakira is clearly portrayed as the winner. For example Shakira displays the more dominant body language always appearing higher up on the bed and in the shot that was used in the publicity photo Shakira is sitting upright while Rihanna is resting her head in Shakira's lap in much the same way that a parent would comfort a child or a dog would lie with its master. This point is rammed home towards the end of the video when Shakira is seen playing various musical instruments because she can while Rihanna is absent. Also the collaboration marks a rare moment in Rihanna's career because for once the video was ready before the song was released. Rihanna tends to favour the more chaotic approach of not even attempting to shoot a video until long after most people have got sick of the song.
One area where Shakira is clearly superior to Rihanna is through her charity work. Shakira set up and runs the widely respected Barefoot Foundation while Rihanna's charity exploits are significantly less productive. In order to highlight this contrast in the days running up to the release of the video Rihanna's CIA handlers/Live Nation (the management) sent Rihanna on a mini-publicity junket for her VivaGlam charity project. This saw Rihanna appear on "Good Morning America" on Wednesday (29/1/14) morning where she was supposed to repeatedly use variants of the phrase; "In my native Barbados" in order to personify the immigration reform element of President Obama's State of the Union address of the previous night. On Wednesday evening Rihanna appeared on the Entertainment (E) Channel and recorded some bits for Canadian television which will be broadcast as and when.
I should point out that back in late 2012 when it became obvious that Rihanna was going to be forced into lots of charity work I thought the management would push her into fairly average projects that were just slightly under-performing. That way I would be on hand to point out what could be improved about Rihanna's projects. That would promote a lot of technical discussion within the charity/international development sector and those who agreed with me over the flaws in Rihanna's projects would be identified as trouble makers and squeezed out. As it turns out the VivaGlam project is actually so ridiculously poor that it falls so far below the minimum accepted standard within the sector that it can't even be used as a valid case study.
VivaGlam is set up to tackle HIV/AIDS. As the name suggests Human Immunodeficiency Virus is indeed a virus. That means that the only way that it is going to be be effectively defeated is through expensive and complex laboratory based research to understand how the virus functions and how best to destroy it. In the meantime people need methods to avoid contact with the virus (condoms, rubber gloves, sterilisation etc) and drug therapies to slow down the virus and treat the symptoms it creates. This all seems far too complicated for VivaGlam so instead they are concentrating all their efforts on talking about HIV/AIDS. These type of talking therapy are, at best, hit and miss within the field of psychotherapy. In the field of virology they are totally and completely useless. So whenever Rihanna talks about her work with VivaGlam it's impossible for her not to look stupid.
Going back to the video itself I suspect the management hoped that it would focus more heavily on Rihanna and Shakira's faux-lesbianism. For example I suspect there is a lot of footage of Rihanna and Shakira writhing in bed that didn't make the final cut. The hope was this would help the US cosy up to the Russians ahead of the winter Olympics by re-enforcing the notion that there's no such thing as lesbians - they're either doing it for attention or because they're mentally/emotionally damaged in some way. Unfortunately that actually only serves to highlight how badly the management have mis-read the Russian gay rights argument. While I hate to generalise Russia is a very homophobic country. That means that there are gangs who will kidnap and murder people simply for being gay and public pressure has forced many local governates to pass strict anti-gay laws.
With the winter Olympics and the worlds attention coming to Sochi which has to be the most gay-friendly city in Russia the Russian government decided to make a big thing about this by passing national anti-gay laws in order for those laws to be positively challenged. Unfortunately the world's gay community - especially in the UK - choked at this opportunity and instead decided to use it to highlight how reactionary, hysterical and downright mentally unbalanced they can be. Therefore my advice to any gay athletes travelling to Sochi would be to take the Jesse Owens approaching of showing that they're just like all the other athletes only a little bit better.
15:15 on 31/1/14 (UK date).
Friday, 31 January 2014
Wednesday, 29 January 2014
The State Of The Union (SOTU) Address.
Last night (28/1/14) US President Barack Obama gave the 2014 State of the Union address. The purpose of this speech is to allow the President to outline the achievements of the past year and lay out their objectives for the coming year.
That first task presented Obama with something of a problem because to be frank he didn't achieve anything in 2013. There was of course the disastrous roll-out of Obamacare but the Affordable Care Act was actually passed way back in 2010. So that is really more of a story about how Obama managed to screw up one of his few achievements. In order to compensate Obama instead decided to talk about the achievements of everyday Americans. This of course gave the speech the unfortunate theme of; "America's a great country, it's just a shame about the President."
In order to give the impression of accomplishment Obama instead chose to focus on foreign policy in the hope that the average voter wouldn't know enough about these complex and far away issues to pick up on the holes in Obama's argument. For example Obama claimed that the operation to remove Syria's chemical weapons was the result of "American diplomacy backed by the threat of force." In fact the plan to remove Syria's chemical weapons is a Russian one and therefore the result of Russian diplomacy. Further more the Russians seem to have put the plan together in order to punish America for its provocation through, primarily, the Rihanna operation. That is why the US is now having to destroy Syria's chemical weapons at sea because every nation it asked to help responded by saying something along the lines of; "We know you don't understand why you shouldn't be doing this but we're going to do you a favour by refusing to help you in order to slow the process down."
In fact the reason why the US is insisting that the Geneva II talks between the Syrian government and who the US likes to pretend represents the Syrian opposition take place during the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Grammys, the State of the Union and the Superbowl is so it can place pressure on all delegates in the hope of working out what on earth is actually going on. As always this plan is fatally flawed because more militant backers of the conflict in Syria are intent on using the talks to identify the Syrian governments weaknesses in order to overthrow them more quickly. With the US still not up to speed with the conflict any attempt to speed things up further is only likely to put the US in an even worse position should the Syrian government fall.
Obama also went onto claim that "American diplomacy... backed by pressure" has halted Iran's nuclear program. Here Obama has more of a point because it was the economic pressure of Obama's sanctions that brought Iran to the negotiating table. However those sanctions have also harmed America and the global economy by reducing the amount of oil available on the global market driving up the oil price and increasing the strategic power of the Gulf Monarchies such as Saudi Arabia. As such it is unclear why halting Iran's nuclear program is a strategic objective of the US because the whole thing seems to be strengthening Saudi Arabia at the US' expense. Therefore rather then highlighting the strengh of US power the Iran deal seems to underline the US' place as a declining world power and its subservience to nations such as Saudi Arabia.
With successes from 2013 in short supply Obama dedicated most of the speech to laying out a laundry list of policies he hopes to implement in 2014. These were all highly populist and seemed dedicated to ensuring a Democratic victory at November's mid-term election.
Some of the policies were extremely basic. For example the centrepiece policy of raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour (Herman Cain anyone?) is simply a bribe; "Vote Democrat, we'll give you money!!" Likewise after 13 years of war very few people are going to campaign on the fact that the US needs to send more of its young men and women off to get killed and maimed in Afghanistan. The gamble that Obama is taking is that most American voters will not understand the complicated reasons why this surrender will reduce the US' diplomatic standing and therefore economic power in the world. Plus it will be at least 2017 before terrorists will again be able to use Afghanistan as a base to launch large scale attacks against US targets.
A lot of the policies though were more sophisticated not only designed to ensure Democratic success but also limit the Republicans ability to compete. For example Obama made a concerted effort to portray himself as a champion of women to the point where in the opening part of his speech you began to doubt if there were any men left in the US at all. Through their - I think - unusual and often poorly communicated stance on abortion and contraception the Republicans have made it far too easy for the Democrats to portray them as waging something of a war against women. So by portraying his policies as being designed to help women every time the Republican Congress blocks them it re-enforces that idea. Of course Obama is hoping that the average voter is too stupid to notice that despite all his nice words Obama - through his actions in the Rihanna operation - has spent most of 2013 insisting that women should only exist as the property of men and all forms of violence against women be it physical, sexual or psychological should not only be tolerated but should be actively applauded.
The same is true of Obama's focus on immigration reform. As I've said before Obama's proposed immigration reforms are deeply flawed and will have a significant effect on driving down US wages and living standards almost to the point that everybody is on the minimum wage. That is why large employers such as Wal-Mart so vigorously support them. Obama however supports immigration reform because he is calculating that if he can turn America's roughly 11 million illegal immigrants into legal citizens with full voting rights they, along with their friends and families, will repay the debt by voting Democrat. If the Republicans succeed in blocking the reforms in Congress then it makes them look like the nasty party in the eyes of the friends and family of illegal immigrants and could shift the entire Hispanic ethnic vote in favour of the Democrat Party. Here the Republicans seem to have already out manoeuvred the Democrats by introducing an alternative plan that would see illegal immigrants become legal immigrants but deny them citizenship and therefore voting rights. Unfortunately though that does not solve the living standards problem.
So in summary rather then gathering all of America's politicians together in one place for Obama to deliver an hour long speech the White House could have saved everyone a lot of time and bother by instead issuing a single page press release reading simply;
"In 2014 the President intends to make sure the Democrats win control of Congress regardless of the cost."
17:40 on 29/1/14 (UK date).
That first task presented Obama with something of a problem because to be frank he didn't achieve anything in 2013. There was of course the disastrous roll-out of Obamacare but the Affordable Care Act was actually passed way back in 2010. So that is really more of a story about how Obama managed to screw up one of his few achievements. In order to compensate Obama instead decided to talk about the achievements of everyday Americans. This of course gave the speech the unfortunate theme of; "America's a great country, it's just a shame about the President."
In order to give the impression of accomplishment Obama instead chose to focus on foreign policy in the hope that the average voter wouldn't know enough about these complex and far away issues to pick up on the holes in Obama's argument. For example Obama claimed that the operation to remove Syria's chemical weapons was the result of "American diplomacy backed by the threat of force." In fact the plan to remove Syria's chemical weapons is a Russian one and therefore the result of Russian diplomacy. Further more the Russians seem to have put the plan together in order to punish America for its provocation through, primarily, the Rihanna operation. That is why the US is now having to destroy Syria's chemical weapons at sea because every nation it asked to help responded by saying something along the lines of; "We know you don't understand why you shouldn't be doing this but we're going to do you a favour by refusing to help you in order to slow the process down."
In fact the reason why the US is insisting that the Geneva II talks between the Syrian government and who the US likes to pretend represents the Syrian opposition take place during the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Grammys, the State of the Union and the Superbowl is so it can place pressure on all delegates in the hope of working out what on earth is actually going on. As always this plan is fatally flawed because more militant backers of the conflict in Syria are intent on using the talks to identify the Syrian governments weaknesses in order to overthrow them more quickly. With the US still not up to speed with the conflict any attempt to speed things up further is only likely to put the US in an even worse position should the Syrian government fall.
Obama also went onto claim that "American diplomacy... backed by pressure" has halted Iran's nuclear program. Here Obama has more of a point because it was the economic pressure of Obama's sanctions that brought Iran to the negotiating table. However those sanctions have also harmed America and the global economy by reducing the amount of oil available on the global market driving up the oil price and increasing the strategic power of the Gulf Monarchies such as Saudi Arabia. As such it is unclear why halting Iran's nuclear program is a strategic objective of the US because the whole thing seems to be strengthening Saudi Arabia at the US' expense. Therefore rather then highlighting the strengh of US power the Iran deal seems to underline the US' place as a declining world power and its subservience to nations such as Saudi Arabia.
With successes from 2013 in short supply Obama dedicated most of the speech to laying out a laundry list of policies he hopes to implement in 2014. These were all highly populist and seemed dedicated to ensuring a Democratic victory at November's mid-term election.
Some of the policies were extremely basic. For example the centrepiece policy of raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour (Herman Cain anyone?) is simply a bribe; "Vote Democrat, we'll give you money!!" Likewise after 13 years of war very few people are going to campaign on the fact that the US needs to send more of its young men and women off to get killed and maimed in Afghanistan. The gamble that Obama is taking is that most American voters will not understand the complicated reasons why this surrender will reduce the US' diplomatic standing and therefore economic power in the world. Plus it will be at least 2017 before terrorists will again be able to use Afghanistan as a base to launch large scale attacks against US targets.
A lot of the policies though were more sophisticated not only designed to ensure Democratic success but also limit the Republicans ability to compete. For example Obama made a concerted effort to portray himself as a champion of women to the point where in the opening part of his speech you began to doubt if there were any men left in the US at all. Through their - I think - unusual and often poorly communicated stance on abortion and contraception the Republicans have made it far too easy for the Democrats to portray them as waging something of a war against women. So by portraying his policies as being designed to help women every time the Republican Congress blocks them it re-enforces that idea. Of course Obama is hoping that the average voter is too stupid to notice that despite all his nice words Obama - through his actions in the Rihanna operation - has spent most of 2013 insisting that women should only exist as the property of men and all forms of violence against women be it physical, sexual or psychological should not only be tolerated but should be actively applauded.
The same is true of Obama's focus on immigration reform. As I've said before Obama's proposed immigration reforms are deeply flawed and will have a significant effect on driving down US wages and living standards almost to the point that everybody is on the minimum wage. That is why large employers such as Wal-Mart so vigorously support them. Obama however supports immigration reform because he is calculating that if he can turn America's roughly 11 million illegal immigrants into legal citizens with full voting rights they, along with their friends and families, will repay the debt by voting Democrat. If the Republicans succeed in blocking the reforms in Congress then it makes them look like the nasty party in the eyes of the friends and family of illegal immigrants and could shift the entire Hispanic ethnic vote in favour of the Democrat Party. Here the Republicans seem to have already out manoeuvred the Democrats by introducing an alternative plan that would see illegal immigrants become legal immigrants but deny them citizenship and therefore voting rights. Unfortunately though that does not solve the living standards problem.
So in summary rather then gathering all of America's politicians together in one place for Obama to deliver an hour long speech the White House could have saved everyone a lot of time and bother by instead issuing a single page press release reading simply;
"In 2014 the President intends to make sure the Democrats win control of Congress regardless of the cost."
17:40 on 29/1/14 (UK date).
Tuesday, 28 January 2014
Sadly CBB Must Come to an End.
Despite a unprecedented for UK TV extension to the season Celebrity Big Brother (CBB) will sadly come to an end on Wednesday (29/1/14). I guess this means that this will probably be one of my last posts on the subject.
On Friday (24/1/14) Linda Nolan was evicted from the show. This was rapidly dwarfed by events later in the evening when a reunited Casey Batchelor and Lee Ryan finally achieved sexual satisfaction whilst in bed together. Exactly what is meant by sexual satisfaction goes a long way to explaining this particular relationship. By her own admission Casey has never achieved orgasm through sex with a partner. Therefore it is likely that she looks on sex more as a way to express love, affection and companionship rather then out and out lust. As a result the events in the CBB house seem to have been conspiring to force Casey back into a relationship with Lee.
Firstly there have been the overt efforts by Jim Davidson to encourage the two to get together. Partly this has been driven by a desire to improve the atmosphere in the house by washing away the memory of Jasmine Waltz who Lee cheated on Casey with. Also Jim comes from the generation where the idea of an unmarried women doesn't really compute and Jim has certainly been doing his bit to reduce the number of unmarried women in the world having been married four times.
Secondly there has been the largely unplanned effects of Jim's massive and long-running argument with Linda. As I've mentioned this argument centred around Linda's now dead husband Brian Hudson's conviction for theft from Jim's mentor Frank Carson. Re-awakening Linda's grief at the death of her husband this argument created an extremely poisonous atmosphere in the house leaving all the housemates craving the shelter of love, affection and companionship. Therefore all the anger and bitterness in house which Lee's cheating on Casey with Jasmine contributed to actually ended up making Lee seem more and more attractive to Casey which in turn made it easier for her to overlook the fact that he's really not an attractive man.
Although sex guarantees ratings Big Brother seemed unsure as to whether it wanted to take responsibility for making a couple out of Casey and Lee. So in Saturday's (25/1/14) grandfather clock task they included a nasty surprise to drive Casey and Lee apart. Basically this task involved a secret door disguised as a grandfather clock being placed in the living room of the house. Every time the 'grandfather clock' chimed the housemates had to freeze and remain perfectly still while a visitor from the outside entered the house and wandered around the house. I think first came Lee's band mates from Blue who started singing one of their songs just daring Lee to join in with them and fail the task. I think up next was Ollie Locke's mother and sister who brought the family dog in with them. The dog proceeded to lick Ollie's face while he tried to remain perfectly still and fought back tears as his mother and sister told him how much they loved and missed him.
The real kicker came though when Lee and Casey were enjoying a post-coital cuddle on the sofas when all of a sudden the clock struck and in walked Jasmine. Jasmine then put in an utterly fake performance about how much she was in love with Lee and how angry she was at Casey for stealing her man. This obviously caused an explosion of emotion in the house with Casey in floods of tears worrying that her parents would be ashamed of her (odd for a topless model) while Lee spent the next day and a half doing that strange thing he does whereby he seems to think he can change history by repeating over and over again to anyone who will listen what he thinks history should be. As someone on Twitter commented it is as if by going without TV for three weeks Lee Ryan has somehow forgotten that TiVo exists. Casey's tears and Lee's desperate attempts to self-rationalise his behaviour went on until Lee was finally and thankfully evicted from the house through the grandfather clock in a surprise (to the housemates) eviction on Sunday (26/1/14)
Although this made for an hour of TV on Sunday that was so dramatic and captivating that it succeed in pushing the Grammys off the top of worldwide Twitter trends I can't help feeling that Jasmine's return to confront Lee and Casey was a little unnecessary. The main problem was that it all happened so quickly that the majority of viewers only found out about it around 15 minutes before the voting closed meaning that there was little time for it to have any impact on the result. If Jasmine hadn't re-entered the house and Sunday's eviction actually took on Monday I think that there was a fair chance that Casey rather then Lee would have been evicted. While Lee is clearly an idiot I can't help but feel that after watching her lose all respect for herself by taking Lee back the viewers in turn would have quickly lost all respect for Casey meaning that no-one voted to save her. Secondly the confrontation was so dramatic that coming so close to the end of the show it has completely killed off activity in the house with everyone too on edge to do anything.
With the housemates really just sitting around quietly waiting to see who has won it seems like a good moment for me to talk about who I would like to see win. Having faced the public vote every week and having survived every week the out and out favourite is of course Jim Davidson although I think a lot of his support might disappear now that it is a vote to win rather then a vote to keep him in the house for as long as possible. That said I wouldn't be too upset to see Jim win because a lot of this stuff about him being a racist, a homophobe and a misogynist seems to me the result of a witch hunt by the liberal elite rather then having any basis in fact. While Jim has been in CBB the self-proclaimed guardians of Britain's liberal elite - Channel 4 - have been far too busy laughing at the poor people in the show "Benefits Streets" while cashing cheques from the taxpayer.
My actual favourite though is Sam Faiers who has really pleasantly surprised me by coming across as rather intelligent and actually quite normal. As I've mentioned before Sam comes from a 'structured reality' show called "The Only Way Is Essex (TOWIE)." This is a show that is so trashy it aspires to be "Keeping Up With the Kardashians." It also follows a similar format of pretending to be a fly-on-the-wall documentary but is actually entirely fake with the people in it pretending to act as outrageously as possible in order to guarantee themselves the most time on screen. TOWIE is particularly offensive because the people in it seem to pride themselves in their own stupidity. For example former TOWIE cast member Amy Childs has built an entire career on her breasts and her inability to understand even the most basic things while fellow cast member Joey Essex recently took great pride in revealing that he was too stupid to tell the time.
Therefore I was really impressed by the way Sam came into the house and more or less spent the entire first week asleep which is pretty much everyone in Britain's reaction to the first week in January. Sam went on to show real intelligence and emotional depth through the way she quietly supported Linda during her feud with Jim and acted a general linchpin/peacemaker within the group. So I think Sam most deserves to win CBB and there is a hope that victory might go a long way in helping to rescue her from TOWIE.
18:05 on 28/1/14 (UK date).
On Friday (24/1/14) Linda Nolan was evicted from the show. This was rapidly dwarfed by events later in the evening when a reunited Casey Batchelor and Lee Ryan finally achieved sexual satisfaction whilst in bed together. Exactly what is meant by sexual satisfaction goes a long way to explaining this particular relationship. By her own admission Casey has never achieved orgasm through sex with a partner. Therefore it is likely that she looks on sex more as a way to express love, affection and companionship rather then out and out lust. As a result the events in the CBB house seem to have been conspiring to force Casey back into a relationship with Lee.
Firstly there have been the overt efforts by Jim Davidson to encourage the two to get together. Partly this has been driven by a desire to improve the atmosphere in the house by washing away the memory of Jasmine Waltz who Lee cheated on Casey with. Also Jim comes from the generation where the idea of an unmarried women doesn't really compute and Jim has certainly been doing his bit to reduce the number of unmarried women in the world having been married four times.
Secondly there has been the largely unplanned effects of Jim's massive and long-running argument with Linda. As I've mentioned this argument centred around Linda's now dead husband Brian Hudson's conviction for theft from Jim's mentor Frank Carson. Re-awakening Linda's grief at the death of her husband this argument created an extremely poisonous atmosphere in the house leaving all the housemates craving the shelter of love, affection and companionship. Therefore all the anger and bitterness in house which Lee's cheating on Casey with Jasmine contributed to actually ended up making Lee seem more and more attractive to Casey which in turn made it easier for her to overlook the fact that he's really not an attractive man.
Although sex guarantees ratings Big Brother seemed unsure as to whether it wanted to take responsibility for making a couple out of Casey and Lee. So in Saturday's (25/1/14) grandfather clock task they included a nasty surprise to drive Casey and Lee apart. Basically this task involved a secret door disguised as a grandfather clock being placed in the living room of the house. Every time the 'grandfather clock' chimed the housemates had to freeze and remain perfectly still while a visitor from the outside entered the house and wandered around the house. I think first came Lee's band mates from Blue who started singing one of their songs just daring Lee to join in with them and fail the task. I think up next was Ollie Locke's mother and sister who brought the family dog in with them. The dog proceeded to lick Ollie's face while he tried to remain perfectly still and fought back tears as his mother and sister told him how much they loved and missed him.
The real kicker came though when Lee and Casey were enjoying a post-coital cuddle on the sofas when all of a sudden the clock struck and in walked Jasmine. Jasmine then put in an utterly fake performance about how much she was in love with Lee and how angry she was at Casey for stealing her man. This obviously caused an explosion of emotion in the house with Casey in floods of tears worrying that her parents would be ashamed of her (odd for a topless model) while Lee spent the next day and a half doing that strange thing he does whereby he seems to think he can change history by repeating over and over again to anyone who will listen what he thinks history should be. As someone on Twitter commented it is as if by going without TV for three weeks Lee Ryan has somehow forgotten that TiVo exists. Casey's tears and Lee's desperate attempts to self-rationalise his behaviour went on until Lee was finally and thankfully evicted from the house through the grandfather clock in a surprise (to the housemates) eviction on Sunday (26/1/14)
Although this made for an hour of TV on Sunday that was so dramatic and captivating that it succeed in pushing the Grammys off the top of worldwide Twitter trends I can't help feeling that Jasmine's return to confront Lee and Casey was a little unnecessary. The main problem was that it all happened so quickly that the majority of viewers only found out about it around 15 minutes before the voting closed meaning that there was little time for it to have any impact on the result. If Jasmine hadn't re-entered the house and Sunday's eviction actually took on Monday I think that there was a fair chance that Casey rather then Lee would have been evicted. While Lee is clearly an idiot I can't help but feel that after watching her lose all respect for herself by taking Lee back the viewers in turn would have quickly lost all respect for Casey meaning that no-one voted to save her. Secondly the confrontation was so dramatic that coming so close to the end of the show it has completely killed off activity in the house with everyone too on edge to do anything.
With the housemates really just sitting around quietly waiting to see who has won it seems like a good moment for me to talk about who I would like to see win. Having faced the public vote every week and having survived every week the out and out favourite is of course Jim Davidson although I think a lot of his support might disappear now that it is a vote to win rather then a vote to keep him in the house for as long as possible. That said I wouldn't be too upset to see Jim win because a lot of this stuff about him being a racist, a homophobe and a misogynist seems to me the result of a witch hunt by the liberal elite rather then having any basis in fact. While Jim has been in CBB the self-proclaimed guardians of Britain's liberal elite - Channel 4 - have been far too busy laughing at the poor people in the show "Benefits Streets" while cashing cheques from the taxpayer.
My actual favourite though is Sam Faiers who has really pleasantly surprised me by coming across as rather intelligent and actually quite normal. As I've mentioned before Sam comes from a 'structured reality' show called "The Only Way Is Essex (TOWIE)." This is a show that is so trashy it aspires to be "Keeping Up With the Kardashians." It also follows a similar format of pretending to be a fly-on-the-wall documentary but is actually entirely fake with the people in it pretending to act as outrageously as possible in order to guarantee themselves the most time on screen. TOWIE is particularly offensive because the people in it seem to pride themselves in their own stupidity. For example former TOWIE cast member Amy Childs has built an entire career on her breasts and her inability to understand even the most basic things while fellow cast member Joey Essex recently took great pride in revealing that he was too stupid to tell the time.
Therefore I was really impressed by the way Sam came into the house and more or less spent the entire first week asleep which is pretty much everyone in Britain's reaction to the first week in January. Sam went on to show real intelligence and emotional depth through the way she quietly supported Linda during her feud with Jim and acted a general linchpin/peacemaker within the group. So I think Sam most deserves to win CBB and there is a hope that victory might go a long way in helping to rescue her from TOWIE.
18:05 on 28/1/14 (UK date).
Monday, 27 January 2014
The 2014 Grammy Awards.
Last night (26/1/13) the 56th Grammy Awards took place in Los Angeles, California, US. To be honest I'd forgotten all about this. Fortunately though the Grammys paid Twitter to have their hashtag trending worldwide throughout most of Saturday (25/1/14). Curiously though Twitter forgot to mention that they'd been paid to promote the Grammys which might have led to some people getting the entirely false impression that these awards for the American music industry are in someway important.
The 2013 Grammys were of course heavily dominated by Rihanna. Firstly she appeared at the ceremony with Chris Brown and in doing so formally declared the resumption of their relationship to the public. Secondly Rihanna performed a buttock clenchingly awful tribute to Bob Marley which was the US showcasing all that it hoped to achieve through Rihanna's upcoming Diamonds World Tour especially in places such as Mali. Even as recently as December 2013's nominations ceremony the plan seemed to be for the 2014 ceremony to act as something of a celebration of the triumph of the Rihanna operation. For example Rihanna's mentor and owner of the Diamonds World Tour promoter Live Nation Jay Z was nominated for nine awards and Rihanna's torch song to the British Monarchy "Stay" was nominated for best song.
As the 2014 ceremony approached the mood began to change dramatically and the main objectives of the ceremony became a last-gasp effort to trick South American nations into agreeing to an extension of the Diamonds World Tour while at the same time providing the Grammys with an opportunity to publicly distance themselves from the Rihanna operation.
The attempt to trick the Americas into the Diamonds World Tour was subtle, brief and actually ended up being largely abandoned. The idea was that awarding Rihanna best album for "Unapologetic" during the pre-show event would hook Rihanna's South American fans into watching the show in the hope of seeing Rihanna appearing on stage to accept the award for Stay. What the fans would actually have seen is Beyonce and Jay Z opening the show by performing together. During that performance and the acceptance speeches of any awards that Jay Z might win subsequently Rihanna was meant to be sitting in the audience looking really p*ssed off. The idea was that this would fuel rumours that Jay Z's mis-management of Rihanna's career stemmed from some sort of feud between Rihanna and Jay Z's wife rather then being a product of a US intelligence operation. In order to find out exactly what was going on with this feud South Americans would be tempted to discuss with Live Nation the possibility of bringing the Diamonds World Tour to their country. In the end Rihanna ended up snubbing the ceremony by not attending.
If this was a tactical move it was a good one because it is the sort of hint Rihanna needs to be giving to indicate that she is no longer participating in the operation against her. I am though a little worried that it was not as co-ordinated and decisive as it needs to be. For example Rihanna is rumoured to be appearing on the US news show "Good Morning America" on Wednesday (29/1/14). This comes on the morning after US President Obama's big State Of The Union (SOTU) speech which will dominate the morning news agenda. That speech is to be attended by survivors of the Boston Marathon Bombing and is rumoured to focus heavily on US immigration reform which Obama failed to enact during the previous legislative session despite it being one of the main objectives of the third leg of the Diamonds World Tour. So by agreeing to appear on Good Morning America Rihanna seems to be sending the message that she is happy to participate in the operation against her. This of course directly contradicts the message Rihanna sent at the Grammys.
The Grammys attempt to distance themselves from the Rihanna operation along with Jay Z and Live Nation played a much larger role in the ceremony. Firstly Jay Z was openly snubbed. Although he was nominated for nine awards Jay Z only ended up winning two awards and he had to share one of those (Rap/sung collaboration) with Justin Timberlake. Along with Eminem Justin Timberlake is another one of my long-standing assigned pseudonyms.
Secondly the awards in the Rap/Hip Hop category which you would normally associate with Jay Z and artists signed to his record label was dominated by Macklemore. Although it wasn't specifically a racial issue the first thing you notice about Macklemore is that they are white meaning that they do not fit into the traditional stereotype of a Rap/Hip Hop artist.
Also rather then constantly going on about how much marijuana they smoke, their b*tches, their Rolex's and their Lamborghini's Macklemore's lyrics are much more politically or socially conscious. For example their big song of 2013 "Same Love" is all about gay marriage while their big song of 2012 "Thrift Shop" mocks the rampant materialism of Rap/Hip Hop culture by boasting about second hand clothes from a thrift or charity shop.
Finally I'm ashamed to admit that I have inadvertently played quite a large role in Macklemore's sudden success. During 2012 London Olympics I made one of my usual Tuesday night trips to the pub creating a lot of tension about what would happen to my home in my absence. In a moment of inspired, drunken brilliance I broke that tension by referencing the Dolly Parton song "Bargain Store." Shortly afterwards Macklemore's debut Thrift Shop started getting really heavily promoted as the US attempted to gauge international reaction to my unexpected brilliance.
To reinforce the message that their social consciousness marks the apart from other Rap/Hip Hop artists Macklemore went on to perform Same Love during the ceremony accompanied by Madonna. Part of that performance saw 34 couples - some gay, some straight - actually get legally married.
Obviously gay marriage is still a very hot topic within US domestic politics and touches on the wider issue of gay rights that are going to be a major issue at the winter Olympics that will shortly be held in Russia. Madonna has already got in quite a lot of trouble with the Russian authorities through a series of self-serving publicity stunts involving gay rights and the Pussy Riot case that had a strong undercurrent of gay rights.
Finally this spectacle of a mass wedding is very much the signature of South Korean cult leader Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church (The Moonies). Since its inception in 1954 the Unification Church has been used as a way for the religiously free South Korea to counter the influence of the aggressively atheist Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Therefore for this stunt caused a lot of controversy and provided lots of grounds for discussion about whether the Grammys should be formally endorsing relationships in this way. From there it is not a huge leap to a discussion about whether the Grammys should have formally endorsed Rihanna and Chris Brown's relationship at the 2013 ceremony.
The massive insult to Jay Z and the Roc Nation family though came in the form of Lorde who won best pop solo performance and song of the year for "Royals" which she went on to perform during the ceremony With the hook "Every song's like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on the timepiece, jet planes, islands, Tigers on the gold leash" this song is quite clearly mocking the rampant materialism of Rap/Hip Hop culture and Beyonce (Queen B) is specifically name checked. Coming from a native of New Zealand which is a very active member of the UK Commonwealth Realm and target of the Diamonds World Tour the chorus "And we will never be Royals" sounds a lot like the old guard having a jolly good laugh at Jay Z, Beyonce, Rihanna and the entire Roc Nation family's expense.
So as they say; "Success has many parents but failure will forever be an orphan." Perhaps Jay Z might want to record a song about it.
16:40 on 27/1/14 (UK date).
Edited at around 10:55 on 28/1/14 to add: I've still not watched the Grammys in the traditional sense but I should mention a couple of things that caused controversy but had nothing to do with the events main theme.
Firstly US heavy metal band Metallica performed "One" alongside Chinese classical pianist Lang Lang. Apart from forcing China to take an interest this seemed intended to send the message that the US fully supports and is happy to unite with the type of authoritarian capitalism that China practises. For example the Terminator films are not really about robots from the future, they're an allegory about authoritarian capitalism and its effects on the human race. Therefore the 'metal' the resistance are constantly fighting are actually authoritarian capitalists. All the first world war imagery used in the performance seemed to be a reference to the conflict in Syria which has become as grindingly pointless as the first world world. With the Geneva II talks going it seems everything the US does at the moment has to reference Syria in someway in order to exert pressure on the delegates.
Then there is Katy Perry whose performance of "Dark Horse" featured lots of Gothic imagery such as bubbling cauldrons and witches broomsticks. This prompted members of a Christian rock band who were in attendance to walk out after labelling the performance as "Satanic." It clearly wasn't and being quite intelligent Katy Perry has dabbled before in this dark/depressive imagery probably most famously in the video for "Wide Awake." Also Katy Perry seemed to be a large influence behind the "Ghetto Goth" phase that her close friend Rihanna went through just before the third leg of the Diamonds World Tour that was recorded in the video for "What Now."
The problem was that during her performance Katy Perry's dress lit up to reveal a rough red cross on her chest. This symbol of the Knights Templar who were a secretive group of elite knights during the time of the medieval crusades - the sort Navy SEALs of their day. Due to their habit of supporting apocalyptic and lunatic groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) some of the wilder reaches of the Internet believe that the Knights Templar still exist and have infiltrated the highest reaches of the US Establishment and intelligence community. As such Knights Templar imagery is quite a good way of visually promoting discussion about US intelligence involvement in the music/entertainment industry.
As we all know there are certain people who are famous because they are extremely talented and really hard working. Then there are other people who are only famous because they get, shall we say, a lot of help to make them that way. Katy Perry obviously fits into the first category but over the summer of 2013 US intelligence tried to claim ownership of Katy Perry by getting Edward Snowden to release details of the PRISM spy program just as Katy Perry was releasing her Prism album. At the time Katy Perry was working to promote that album in Australia and the Snowden presentation caused a lot of problems between Australia and neighbouring Indonesia where they still periodically burn women for being witches. So by ending her performance by appearing to be burnt at the stake as a witch Katy Perry was expressing her displeasure at all this.
Sadly Katy Perry didn't do herself any favours by referencing the Knights Templar which is also the name of an extremely violent Mexican drugs cartel who operate in the Michoacan state. So violent are the Mexican Knights Templar that local residents have recently formed local militia groups in an effort to drive them out leaving the Mexican government and military effectively as peacekeepers in a war zone. So by referencing the Knights Templar Katy Perry did manage to put herself in the middle of the arguments about US immigration and South American drugs policy. It is no coincidence that the day after the Grammys the Mexican government announced that it had captured one of the leaders of the Knights Templar cartel.
The 2013 Grammys were of course heavily dominated by Rihanna. Firstly she appeared at the ceremony with Chris Brown and in doing so formally declared the resumption of their relationship to the public. Secondly Rihanna performed a buttock clenchingly awful tribute to Bob Marley which was the US showcasing all that it hoped to achieve through Rihanna's upcoming Diamonds World Tour especially in places such as Mali. Even as recently as December 2013's nominations ceremony the plan seemed to be for the 2014 ceremony to act as something of a celebration of the triumph of the Rihanna operation. For example Rihanna's mentor and owner of the Diamonds World Tour promoter Live Nation Jay Z was nominated for nine awards and Rihanna's torch song to the British Monarchy "Stay" was nominated for best song.
As the 2014 ceremony approached the mood began to change dramatically and the main objectives of the ceremony became a last-gasp effort to trick South American nations into agreeing to an extension of the Diamonds World Tour while at the same time providing the Grammys with an opportunity to publicly distance themselves from the Rihanna operation.
The attempt to trick the Americas into the Diamonds World Tour was subtle, brief and actually ended up being largely abandoned. The idea was that awarding Rihanna best album for "Unapologetic" during the pre-show event would hook Rihanna's South American fans into watching the show in the hope of seeing Rihanna appearing on stage to accept the award for Stay. What the fans would actually have seen is Beyonce and Jay Z opening the show by performing together. During that performance and the acceptance speeches of any awards that Jay Z might win subsequently Rihanna was meant to be sitting in the audience looking really p*ssed off. The idea was that this would fuel rumours that Jay Z's mis-management of Rihanna's career stemmed from some sort of feud between Rihanna and Jay Z's wife rather then being a product of a US intelligence operation. In order to find out exactly what was going on with this feud South Americans would be tempted to discuss with Live Nation the possibility of bringing the Diamonds World Tour to their country. In the end Rihanna ended up snubbing the ceremony by not attending.
If this was a tactical move it was a good one because it is the sort of hint Rihanna needs to be giving to indicate that she is no longer participating in the operation against her. I am though a little worried that it was not as co-ordinated and decisive as it needs to be. For example Rihanna is rumoured to be appearing on the US news show "Good Morning America" on Wednesday (29/1/14). This comes on the morning after US President Obama's big State Of The Union (SOTU) speech which will dominate the morning news agenda. That speech is to be attended by survivors of the Boston Marathon Bombing and is rumoured to focus heavily on US immigration reform which Obama failed to enact during the previous legislative session despite it being one of the main objectives of the third leg of the Diamonds World Tour. So by agreeing to appear on Good Morning America Rihanna seems to be sending the message that she is happy to participate in the operation against her. This of course directly contradicts the message Rihanna sent at the Grammys.
The Grammys attempt to distance themselves from the Rihanna operation along with Jay Z and Live Nation played a much larger role in the ceremony. Firstly Jay Z was openly snubbed. Although he was nominated for nine awards Jay Z only ended up winning two awards and he had to share one of those (Rap/sung collaboration) with Justin Timberlake. Along with Eminem Justin Timberlake is another one of my long-standing assigned pseudonyms.
Secondly the awards in the Rap/Hip Hop category which you would normally associate with Jay Z and artists signed to his record label was dominated by Macklemore. Although it wasn't specifically a racial issue the first thing you notice about Macklemore is that they are white meaning that they do not fit into the traditional stereotype of a Rap/Hip Hop artist.
Also rather then constantly going on about how much marijuana they smoke, their b*tches, their Rolex's and their Lamborghini's Macklemore's lyrics are much more politically or socially conscious. For example their big song of 2013 "Same Love" is all about gay marriage while their big song of 2012 "Thrift Shop" mocks the rampant materialism of Rap/Hip Hop culture by boasting about second hand clothes from a thrift or charity shop.
Finally I'm ashamed to admit that I have inadvertently played quite a large role in Macklemore's sudden success. During 2012 London Olympics I made one of my usual Tuesday night trips to the pub creating a lot of tension about what would happen to my home in my absence. In a moment of inspired, drunken brilliance I broke that tension by referencing the Dolly Parton song "Bargain Store." Shortly afterwards Macklemore's debut Thrift Shop started getting really heavily promoted as the US attempted to gauge international reaction to my unexpected brilliance.
To reinforce the message that their social consciousness marks the apart from other Rap/Hip Hop artists Macklemore went on to perform Same Love during the ceremony accompanied by Madonna. Part of that performance saw 34 couples - some gay, some straight - actually get legally married.
Obviously gay marriage is still a very hot topic within US domestic politics and touches on the wider issue of gay rights that are going to be a major issue at the winter Olympics that will shortly be held in Russia. Madonna has already got in quite a lot of trouble with the Russian authorities through a series of self-serving publicity stunts involving gay rights and the Pussy Riot case that had a strong undercurrent of gay rights.
Finally this spectacle of a mass wedding is very much the signature of South Korean cult leader Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church (The Moonies). Since its inception in 1954 the Unification Church has been used as a way for the religiously free South Korea to counter the influence of the aggressively atheist Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Therefore for this stunt caused a lot of controversy and provided lots of grounds for discussion about whether the Grammys should be formally endorsing relationships in this way. From there it is not a huge leap to a discussion about whether the Grammys should have formally endorsed Rihanna and Chris Brown's relationship at the 2013 ceremony.
The massive insult to Jay Z and the Roc Nation family though came in the form of Lorde who won best pop solo performance and song of the year for "Royals" which she went on to perform during the ceremony With the hook "Every song's like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on the timepiece, jet planes, islands, Tigers on the gold leash" this song is quite clearly mocking the rampant materialism of Rap/Hip Hop culture and Beyonce (Queen B) is specifically name checked. Coming from a native of New Zealand which is a very active member of the UK Commonwealth Realm and target of the Diamonds World Tour the chorus "And we will never be Royals" sounds a lot like the old guard having a jolly good laugh at Jay Z, Beyonce, Rihanna and the entire Roc Nation family's expense.
So as they say; "Success has many parents but failure will forever be an orphan." Perhaps Jay Z might want to record a song about it.
16:40 on 27/1/14 (UK date).
Edited at around 10:55 on 28/1/14 to add: I've still not watched the Grammys in the traditional sense but I should mention a couple of things that caused controversy but had nothing to do with the events main theme.
Firstly US heavy metal band Metallica performed "One" alongside Chinese classical pianist Lang Lang. Apart from forcing China to take an interest this seemed intended to send the message that the US fully supports and is happy to unite with the type of authoritarian capitalism that China practises. For example the Terminator films are not really about robots from the future, they're an allegory about authoritarian capitalism and its effects on the human race. Therefore the 'metal' the resistance are constantly fighting are actually authoritarian capitalists. All the first world war imagery used in the performance seemed to be a reference to the conflict in Syria which has become as grindingly pointless as the first world world. With the Geneva II talks going it seems everything the US does at the moment has to reference Syria in someway in order to exert pressure on the delegates.
Then there is Katy Perry whose performance of "Dark Horse" featured lots of Gothic imagery such as bubbling cauldrons and witches broomsticks. This prompted members of a Christian rock band who were in attendance to walk out after labelling the performance as "Satanic." It clearly wasn't and being quite intelligent Katy Perry has dabbled before in this dark/depressive imagery probably most famously in the video for "Wide Awake." Also Katy Perry seemed to be a large influence behind the "Ghetto Goth" phase that her close friend Rihanna went through just before the third leg of the Diamonds World Tour that was recorded in the video for "What Now."
The problem was that during her performance Katy Perry's dress lit up to reveal a rough red cross on her chest. This symbol of the Knights Templar who were a secretive group of elite knights during the time of the medieval crusades - the sort Navy SEALs of their day. Due to their habit of supporting apocalyptic and lunatic groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) some of the wilder reaches of the Internet believe that the Knights Templar still exist and have infiltrated the highest reaches of the US Establishment and intelligence community. As such Knights Templar imagery is quite a good way of visually promoting discussion about US intelligence involvement in the music/entertainment industry.
As we all know there are certain people who are famous because they are extremely talented and really hard working. Then there are other people who are only famous because they get, shall we say, a lot of help to make them that way. Katy Perry obviously fits into the first category but over the summer of 2013 US intelligence tried to claim ownership of Katy Perry by getting Edward Snowden to release details of the PRISM spy program just as Katy Perry was releasing her Prism album. At the time Katy Perry was working to promote that album in Australia and the Snowden presentation caused a lot of problems between Australia and neighbouring Indonesia where they still periodically burn women for being witches. So by ending her performance by appearing to be burnt at the stake as a witch Katy Perry was expressing her displeasure at all this.
Sadly Katy Perry didn't do herself any favours by referencing the Knights Templar which is also the name of an extremely violent Mexican drugs cartel who operate in the Michoacan state. So violent are the Mexican Knights Templar that local residents have recently formed local militia groups in an effort to drive them out leaving the Mexican government and military effectively as peacekeepers in a war zone. So by referencing the Knights Templar Katy Perry did manage to put herself in the middle of the arguments about US immigration and South American drugs policy. It is no coincidence that the day after the Grammys the Mexican government announced that it had captured one of the leaders of the Knights Templar cartel.
Thursday, 23 January 2014
CBB's Mammouth Task.
In the couple of days since my previous post on the subject it has been revealed why Celebrity Big Brother (CBB) has been a little bit flat over the start of this week - Big Brother had been saving itself up for an absolutely epic shopping task. This involved the housemates having to 'trek across the arctic to the north pole.'
In practical terms this involved the housemates having to walk in giant circle in a garden filled with fake snow covering a distance of around 120km (70miles) in two days. Primarily the purpose of this exercise was to try and lighten the mood in the house by getting the housemates taking exercise out in the fresh air and sunlight in order to boost their serotonin levels. However there was an awful lot more involved in the task.
For example the housemates were spilt into two groups; "The Explorers" (Jim Davidson, Linda Nolan, Liz Jones, Ollie Locke and Sam Faiers) whose job it was to ride around on a dog sled and "The Huskies" (Luisa Zissman, Dappy, Lee Ryan and Casey Batchelor) whose job it was to pull the dog sled and the explorers around. Just to complicate matters periodically an alarm would sound and the explorers had to chain the huskies up to a wall and gather around the sled to protect the group. The selection of the groups was far from random though and represented a split amongst the housemates that has been evident pretty much from the start of the show. The explorer group was made up of the older housemates who have generally been behaving themselves and conducting themselves with decorum. Although Sam and Ollie are both younger then Lee and I think Luisa they've generally been behaving in a more mature manner. The huskie group was made up of the housemates who have been behaving outrageously with their nudity, sex games and incestuous love triangles.
Whenever the two groups interacted the explorers got the impression that the huskies were getting the worse treatment being forced to do all the work, being fed only 'dog food' (cold minced beef and onions) and being made to sleep in a 'kennel' outside of the main house. This obviously played particularly on Liz Jones' somewhat bizarre attitudes towards animal rights. However the 'kennel' was actually a special room kitted out much like a traditional English pub with quality food, alcohol on tap, soft sofas and big screen TV's on which the huskies could watch the explorers sitting around feeling sorry for huskies and the rough treatment they were getting. The real purpose of the task therefore was for the huskies to keep the preferential treatment they were getting a secret from the explorers. The intention here seemed to be to make the huskies feel guilty about what they were putting the explorers through while they were having their fun in the hope it would make the huskies moderate their behaviour once the task was over.
One of the things the huskies got to watch while they were viewing the explorers on TV was another round of the argument between Jim and Linda. Basically on Monday (20/1/14) night Jim, Linda and Liz were sitting around quietly on the sofas afraid to have any fun while the huskies were suffering. In an effort to break the silence Jim started talking about his experience of being arrested for alleged sex offences as part of the Jimmy Savile investigation which prevented him from appearing on last winter's season of CBB. This is obviously something that has been playing on Jim's mind throughout the show and in fact I think one of his main reasons for appearing was to rehabilitate his reputation by pointing out that there was never any suggestion he was involved in child sex offences and no charges of any sort were ever filed. However all the talk of arrest, the criminal justice system and the damage it can do to a celebrity's reputation made Linda think that Jim was having another sideways dig at her husband Brian Hudson and his legal troubles that began in Frank Carson's dressing room. As a result Linda exploded and had another long rant at Jim during which even the ever supportive Sam looked like she had had enough of Linda.
Another interesting aspect of this enormous task saw the explorers having to go ice fishing. This involved the explorers having to dangle a fishing line through a hole that had been cut into the set. Beneath them members of the production crew would attach either dead fish or bits of squid to the line. The huskies would then have to use their mouths to pull these fishy bits off the lines and put them in a bowl where they'd be added up and the housemates would be given some sort of reward. This was very much an attempt to encourage Lee and Casey to resume their relationship by breaking down the psychological barriers that were keeping them apart. The psychological barrier of being prepared to put disgusting fishy bits in your mouth on national TV was a not particularly subtle reference to oral sex. This aspect of the task seems to have had some success with a kind of drunk Casey 'jokingly' asking Lee if he'd like a blow job.
With Lee and Casey moving ever closer together Luisa has started to begin to try and push them apart. Rather then being the result of malice this seems to be a genuine concern on the part of Luisa that Casey would be humiliating herself by taking Lee back. It involves pretty much the same trick that Jim was playing of asking Lee and Casey questions about their relationship such as whether they're sleeping in the same bed but the way Luisa is asking the questions discourages the relationship. For example where Jim would have asked if they're sleeping in the same bed Luisa would ask if they're sleeping in the same bed that Lee shared with Jasmine. This could become an issue over the coming days if other housemates choose sides either to encourage or discourage Lee and Casey's relationship. The key issue though will be how the Jim and Linda argument is resolved because if that is still going on most other housemates will probably opt to keep their heads down in the hope of a quiet life.
One step in the right direction is that Liz Jones was evicted during Wednesday's (22/1/14) live show. This was almost immediately followed by another round of face to face nominations for eviction. These won't be broadcast until tonight but I gather Liz's departure has thrown the game wide open with five of the remaining eight housemates up for eviction. These include Linda who I think should go next for the reasons already discussed.
16:15 on 23/1/14 (UK date).
Updated at around 11:25 on 24/1/14 (UK date) to add;
Whilst watching yesterday's (23/1/14) highlights show I appear to have Tweeted myself into work. That show that featured events from Wednesday focused mainly on the eviction of Liz and the face to face nominations that followed. However before all that Big Brother set Sam and Ollie a special task.
Sam and Ollie have developed a reputation for hiding in the background and not expressing strong opinions on any of the major issues in the house. In the UK we describe this as "sitting on the fence." So Big Brother got Sam and Ollie to literally sit on a fence in front of all the other housemates. They were then forced to pick a side on all the major issues by standing on one side or the other of that fence. For example they were asked who was the most sexist; Jim or Dappy and whether Casey or Lee was getting the most out of their resumed relationship. The purpose of this was obviously to encourage Sam and Ollie to participate in the show by forcing them to pick a side on the major issues.
The first concern about this task is that Sam and Ollie do have opinions about the goings on in the house. They just choose to express them more discreetly. For example Ollie is perfectly happy to join Lee and Dappy on team Jim but anytime Jim goes too far Ollie will rush over to Linda to console her. This effectively makes Sam and Ollie swing voters whose opinions are needed to form a group majority in order to solve any issue. They are also quite easy for other stronger personalities (Luisa) to nudge in a certain direction. By forcing Sam and Ollie to declare firm positions on all the major issues in front of what turned into an open group discussion on the main issues makes it more difficult for them to act and be used in this way which in my opinion makes for a more boring TV show.
The second concern I have about this task is that its objective seems to have already been achieved through Sam's facing of the public eviction vote. This called into sharp focus for Sam that if she wanted to stay on the show she needed to play a more overt role in the house in order to secure more screen time. As a result Sam went on to cause a bit of controversy by suggesting that Ollie didn't really stand much of a chance with her romantically. This obviously caused a bit of tension with Ollie securing Sam a bit more screen time while also passing on the message to Ollie that he needs to do more to get his face known. Big Brother restating this warning to Sam and Ollie through the task sent the pair, and Ollie particularly, into a bit of a frenzy for attention.
The problem is that coming from "The Only Way Is Essex" and "Made in Chelsea" respectively both Sam and Ollie are most familiar with the 'structured reality' concept. I personally find this type of show quite horrific because they claim to be almost documentaries following people as they go about their everyday lives. However because they're 'structured' these shows are entirely fake so what you actually get is people acting out (often really badly) cartoonish like characters that just happen to have the same name as the actor playing them. So in his quest for attention Ollie immediately reverted to this mode structuring a scene in which he gathered all the housemates around the couches and gave them a long speech about how offended (for really nonsense reasons) he was about being nominated by other housemates. This was so fake and so cheesy that it ended up sending other housemates into fits of laughter (Luisa and Linda) and sarcastic applause (Jim). Sadly Ollie didn't quite get the hint so responded by continuing to play his outraged Made in Chelsea character.
In practical terms this involved the housemates having to walk in giant circle in a garden filled with fake snow covering a distance of around 120km (70miles) in two days. Primarily the purpose of this exercise was to try and lighten the mood in the house by getting the housemates taking exercise out in the fresh air and sunlight in order to boost their serotonin levels. However there was an awful lot more involved in the task.
For example the housemates were spilt into two groups; "The Explorers" (Jim Davidson, Linda Nolan, Liz Jones, Ollie Locke and Sam Faiers) whose job it was to ride around on a dog sled and "The Huskies" (Luisa Zissman, Dappy, Lee Ryan and Casey Batchelor) whose job it was to pull the dog sled and the explorers around. Just to complicate matters periodically an alarm would sound and the explorers had to chain the huskies up to a wall and gather around the sled to protect the group. The selection of the groups was far from random though and represented a split amongst the housemates that has been evident pretty much from the start of the show. The explorer group was made up of the older housemates who have generally been behaving themselves and conducting themselves with decorum. Although Sam and Ollie are both younger then Lee and I think Luisa they've generally been behaving in a more mature manner. The huskie group was made up of the housemates who have been behaving outrageously with their nudity, sex games and incestuous love triangles.
Whenever the two groups interacted the explorers got the impression that the huskies were getting the worse treatment being forced to do all the work, being fed only 'dog food' (cold minced beef and onions) and being made to sleep in a 'kennel' outside of the main house. This obviously played particularly on Liz Jones' somewhat bizarre attitudes towards animal rights. However the 'kennel' was actually a special room kitted out much like a traditional English pub with quality food, alcohol on tap, soft sofas and big screen TV's on which the huskies could watch the explorers sitting around feeling sorry for huskies and the rough treatment they were getting. The real purpose of the task therefore was for the huskies to keep the preferential treatment they were getting a secret from the explorers. The intention here seemed to be to make the huskies feel guilty about what they were putting the explorers through while they were having their fun in the hope it would make the huskies moderate their behaviour once the task was over.
One of the things the huskies got to watch while they were viewing the explorers on TV was another round of the argument between Jim and Linda. Basically on Monday (20/1/14) night Jim, Linda and Liz were sitting around quietly on the sofas afraid to have any fun while the huskies were suffering. In an effort to break the silence Jim started talking about his experience of being arrested for alleged sex offences as part of the Jimmy Savile investigation which prevented him from appearing on last winter's season of CBB. This is obviously something that has been playing on Jim's mind throughout the show and in fact I think one of his main reasons for appearing was to rehabilitate his reputation by pointing out that there was never any suggestion he was involved in child sex offences and no charges of any sort were ever filed. However all the talk of arrest, the criminal justice system and the damage it can do to a celebrity's reputation made Linda think that Jim was having another sideways dig at her husband Brian Hudson and his legal troubles that began in Frank Carson's dressing room. As a result Linda exploded and had another long rant at Jim during which even the ever supportive Sam looked like she had had enough of Linda.
Another interesting aspect of this enormous task saw the explorers having to go ice fishing. This involved the explorers having to dangle a fishing line through a hole that had been cut into the set. Beneath them members of the production crew would attach either dead fish or bits of squid to the line. The huskies would then have to use their mouths to pull these fishy bits off the lines and put them in a bowl where they'd be added up and the housemates would be given some sort of reward. This was very much an attempt to encourage Lee and Casey to resume their relationship by breaking down the psychological barriers that were keeping them apart. The psychological barrier of being prepared to put disgusting fishy bits in your mouth on national TV was a not particularly subtle reference to oral sex. This aspect of the task seems to have had some success with a kind of drunk Casey 'jokingly' asking Lee if he'd like a blow job.
With Lee and Casey moving ever closer together Luisa has started to begin to try and push them apart. Rather then being the result of malice this seems to be a genuine concern on the part of Luisa that Casey would be humiliating herself by taking Lee back. It involves pretty much the same trick that Jim was playing of asking Lee and Casey questions about their relationship such as whether they're sleeping in the same bed but the way Luisa is asking the questions discourages the relationship. For example where Jim would have asked if they're sleeping in the same bed Luisa would ask if they're sleeping in the same bed that Lee shared with Jasmine. This could become an issue over the coming days if other housemates choose sides either to encourage or discourage Lee and Casey's relationship. The key issue though will be how the Jim and Linda argument is resolved because if that is still going on most other housemates will probably opt to keep their heads down in the hope of a quiet life.
One step in the right direction is that Liz Jones was evicted during Wednesday's (22/1/14) live show. This was almost immediately followed by another round of face to face nominations for eviction. These won't be broadcast until tonight but I gather Liz's departure has thrown the game wide open with five of the remaining eight housemates up for eviction. These include Linda who I think should go next for the reasons already discussed.
16:15 on 23/1/14 (UK date).
Updated at around 11:25 on 24/1/14 (UK date) to add;
Whilst watching yesterday's (23/1/14) highlights show I appear to have Tweeted myself into work. That show that featured events from Wednesday focused mainly on the eviction of Liz and the face to face nominations that followed. However before all that Big Brother set Sam and Ollie a special task.
Sam and Ollie have developed a reputation for hiding in the background and not expressing strong opinions on any of the major issues in the house. In the UK we describe this as "sitting on the fence." So Big Brother got Sam and Ollie to literally sit on a fence in front of all the other housemates. They were then forced to pick a side on all the major issues by standing on one side or the other of that fence. For example they were asked who was the most sexist; Jim or Dappy and whether Casey or Lee was getting the most out of their resumed relationship. The purpose of this was obviously to encourage Sam and Ollie to participate in the show by forcing them to pick a side on the major issues.
The first concern about this task is that Sam and Ollie do have opinions about the goings on in the house. They just choose to express them more discreetly. For example Ollie is perfectly happy to join Lee and Dappy on team Jim but anytime Jim goes too far Ollie will rush over to Linda to console her. This effectively makes Sam and Ollie swing voters whose opinions are needed to form a group majority in order to solve any issue. They are also quite easy for other stronger personalities (Luisa) to nudge in a certain direction. By forcing Sam and Ollie to declare firm positions on all the major issues in front of what turned into an open group discussion on the main issues makes it more difficult for them to act and be used in this way which in my opinion makes for a more boring TV show.
The second concern I have about this task is that its objective seems to have already been achieved through Sam's facing of the public eviction vote. This called into sharp focus for Sam that if she wanted to stay on the show she needed to play a more overt role in the house in order to secure more screen time. As a result Sam went on to cause a bit of controversy by suggesting that Ollie didn't really stand much of a chance with her romantically. This obviously caused a bit of tension with Ollie securing Sam a bit more screen time while also passing on the message to Ollie that he needs to do more to get his face known. Big Brother restating this warning to Sam and Ollie through the task sent the pair, and Ollie particularly, into a bit of a frenzy for attention.
The problem is that coming from "The Only Way Is Essex" and "Made in Chelsea" respectively both Sam and Ollie are most familiar with the 'structured reality' concept. I personally find this type of show quite horrific because they claim to be almost documentaries following people as they go about their everyday lives. However because they're 'structured' these shows are entirely fake so what you actually get is people acting out (often really badly) cartoonish like characters that just happen to have the same name as the actor playing them. So in his quest for attention Ollie immediately reverted to this mode structuring a scene in which he gathered all the housemates around the couches and gave them a long speech about how offended (for really nonsense reasons) he was about being nominated by other housemates. This was so fake and so cheesy that it ended up sending other housemates into fits of laughter (Luisa and Linda) and sarcastic applause (Jim). Sadly Ollie didn't quite get the hint so responded by continuing to play his outraged Made in Chelsea character.
Tuesday, 21 January 2014
Is it Time for Liz to Leave CBB?
Since my last post on the subject not much has been going on in the Celebrity Big Brother (CBB) house. This isn't because the show has suddenly become boring it is just that for there to be exciting days there also needs to be the odd boring day. Take example Saturday (18/1/14) when the housemates were again rewarded for a successful task with all the ingredients for a party such as snack food, music and lots of alcohol. However after Friday's (17/1/14) big party all the housemates wanted to do was sit around quietly and recover.
On Sunday (19/1/14) Luisa Zissman was set something of an interesting special task. This involved her having to manipulate other housemates into doing things. So for example Luisa had to make Liz Jones laugh, get Jim Davidson to disagree with her and get Dappy to teach her how to rap. The twist was though that while Luisa was being set this task in the diary room all the other housemates were being told what her task was and the true objective of the task was for the other housemates to make sure Luisa failed in her task. This was intended to sort of cut Luisa down to size after she'd started to become a little too active in her role of alpha female following the departure of Jasmine Waltz and the big fight between Jim and Linda Nolan. Rather then being a sign of a particularly malicious personality I think the zeal with which Luisa had been winding up the other housemates was simply her swinging too far in the opposite direction in a effort to recover the confidence she'd lost through the Jasmine, Lee Ryan, Luisa and Casey Batchelor saga.
The main news of the past couple of days though has been Monday's (20/1/14) nominations for Wednesday's (22/1/14) eviction. My obvious nomination would have been Linda Nolan. That's not out of any sort of malice it is just that the argument with Jim has clearly hit Linda hard and somebody needs to leave the house. Therefore it would probably be best all round if Linda were to leave so she can go off an grieve in peace. Unfortunately the other housemates have got stuck in a bit of a rut of nominating Jim and Liz for eviction. Big Brother has also got into a bit of a rut of also putting the housemate with the most nominations who isn't Jim or Liz up for eviction. On this occasion this was Sam Faiers who only actually received two nominations.
There can be no suggestion that Sam is evicted on Wednesday because although she is performing it quietly Sam is actually performing a vital role within the group. For example since the big fight with Jim Sam has taken to sleeping in the same bed as Linda in order to prevent her from getting too depressed. Similarly there can be no suggestion that Jim would leave because frankly what would Luisa do with her days if Jim wasn't there. Also Jim has started to display a fair bit of cunning himself.
Apart from the big fight between Jim and Linda the other big issue of the show has been the romantic relationship between Lee and Casey that Jasmine dramatically broke up. With everyone in the house angry at Lee and Jasmine and feeling a bit sorry for Casey it would actually improve the atmosphere in the house if Lee and Casey were to reunite effectively wiping away the memory of Jasmine. With Jasmine having left Casey has been starting to show signs of begining to take Lee back out of a combination of boredom and a lack of other options.
Jim has been doing his little bit to try and make this happen. On Saturday night he sat down with Lee and Casey and kept asking them questions about their relationship such as whether they were in a relationship of whether they could see themselves getting into a relationship. By getting them to focus on the issue Jim was helping them break down the psychological barriers - such as Casey's better judgement - that were preventing them from being a couple. As a result from Sunday onwards Lee and Casey have been moving ever closer to reuniting.
Therefore I think it is now time for Liz Jones to leave CBB if only to break the monotony of Jim and Liz constantly being nominated for eviction. For example Jim versus Liz and Sam for eviction is a bit of a no brainer but say Jim versus Lee and Dappy would be a much more interesting prospect. If by some miracle Liz remains in the house Big Brother might want to consider manufacturing a way to exclude her from the next couple of evictions.
16:25 on 21/1/14 (UK date).
Edited at around 19:55 on 21/1/14 (UK date) to add; I'm back from the pub!
Although I don't know if it will make it into tonight's highlights show according to the Twitter rumours and well the front page of Richard Desmond's Daily Star newspaper on Monday Sam Faiers suffered a violent allergic reaction and had to be rushed to hospital. While I've not seen her medical records I gather this was actually an outbreak of hives that was treated on site by the show's doctor with antihistamines. As with eczema this type of skin condition is often a psychosomatic reaction to stress. In Sam's case it seems to be a result of her role in the argument between Liz and Jim aggravated by her unexpected nomination for eviction.
On Sunday (19/1/14) Luisa Zissman was set something of an interesting special task. This involved her having to manipulate other housemates into doing things. So for example Luisa had to make Liz Jones laugh, get Jim Davidson to disagree with her and get Dappy to teach her how to rap. The twist was though that while Luisa was being set this task in the diary room all the other housemates were being told what her task was and the true objective of the task was for the other housemates to make sure Luisa failed in her task. This was intended to sort of cut Luisa down to size after she'd started to become a little too active in her role of alpha female following the departure of Jasmine Waltz and the big fight between Jim and Linda Nolan. Rather then being a sign of a particularly malicious personality I think the zeal with which Luisa had been winding up the other housemates was simply her swinging too far in the opposite direction in a effort to recover the confidence she'd lost through the Jasmine, Lee Ryan, Luisa and Casey Batchelor saga.
The main news of the past couple of days though has been Monday's (20/1/14) nominations for Wednesday's (22/1/14) eviction. My obvious nomination would have been Linda Nolan. That's not out of any sort of malice it is just that the argument with Jim has clearly hit Linda hard and somebody needs to leave the house. Therefore it would probably be best all round if Linda were to leave so she can go off an grieve in peace. Unfortunately the other housemates have got stuck in a bit of a rut of nominating Jim and Liz for eviction. Big Brother has also got into a bit of a rut of also putting the housemate with the most nominations who isn't Jim or Liz up for eviction. On this occasion this was Sam Faiers who only actually received two nominations.
There can be no suggestion that Sam is evicted on Wednesday because although she is performing it quietly Sam is actually performing a vital role within the group. For example since the big fight with Jim Sam has taken to sleeping in the same bed as Linda in order to prevent her from getting too depressed. Similarly there can be no suggestion that Jim would leave because frankly what would Luisa do with her days if Jim wasn't there. Also Jim has started to display a fair bit of cunning himself.
Apart from the big fight between Jim and Linda the other big issue of the show has been the romantic relationship between Lee and Casey that Jasmine dramatically broke up. With everyone in the house angry at Lee and Jasmine and feeling a bit sorry for Casey it would actually improve the atmosphere in the house if Lee and Casey were to reunite effectively wiping away the memory of Jasmine. With Jasmine having left Casey has been starting to show signs of begining to take Lee back out of a combination of boredom and a lack of other options.
Jim has been doing his little bit to try and make this happen. On Saturday night he sat down with Lee and Casey and kept asking them questions about their relationship such as whether they were in a relationship of whether they could see themselves getting into a relationship. By getting them to focus on the issue Jim was helping them break down the psychological barriers - such as Casey's better judgement - that were preventing them from being a couple. As a result from Sunday onwards Lee and Casey have been moving ever closer to reuniting.
Therefore I think it is now time for Liz Jones to leave CBB if only to break the monotony of Jim and Liz constantly being nominated for eviction. For example Jim versus Liz and Sam for eviction is a bit of a no brainer but say Jim versus Lee and Dappy would be a much more interesting prospect. If by some miracle Liz remains in the house Big Brother might want to consider manufacturing a way to exclude her from the next couple of evictions.
16:25 on 21/1/14 (UK date).
Edited at around 19:55 on 21/1/14 (UK date) to add; I'm back from the pub!
Although I don't know if it will make it into tonight's highlights show according to the Twitter rumours and well the front page of Richard Desmond's Daily Star newspaper on Monday Sam Faiers suffered a violent allergic reaction and had to be rushed to hospital. While I've not seen her medical records I gather this was actually an outbreak of hives that was treated on site by the show's doctor with antihistamines. As with eczema this type of skin condition is often a psychosomatic reaction to stress. In Sam's case it seems to be a result of her role in the argument between Liz and Jim aggravated by her unexpected nomination for eviction.
Monday, 20 January 2014
Obama's Iraq Disaster.
Sub-titled: What I was doing before Sharon died.
Upon winning the 2008 Presidential Election Barack Obama realised that American voters were weary of the wars in Afghanistan and particularly in Iraq. Calculating that this might adversely effect his chances of winning the 2012 Presidential Election Obama made it his mission to pull all US troops out of Iraq before that election regardless of the cost. The problem was that the situation in Iraq was nowhere near ready for a US troop withdrawal.
Under the rule of Saddam Hussein Iraq's Sunnis and Shias were played off against each other in order to justify the continuation of the dictatorship. So when Hussein fell Iraq's Sunnis and Shias embarked on a brutal sectarian war. As the Sunnis were linked to al-Qaeda and the Shias were better organised the US looked to the Shias to build a new Iraqi government. The problem was that the sectarian strife continued after the formation of the government with Iraq's Sunnis largely refusing to co-operate with the Shia dominated government and the Shia dominated government acting in a way that was biased towards Iraq's Shias at the expense of the Sunnis. Some progress was made in improving the situation during the 2006/7 "Awakening" or "Sahwa" in which Sunni tribal leaders in mainly western Iraq were persuaded to side with the US military against al-Qaeda militants. Unfortunately this alliance didn't really transfer to the Iraqi government so when the US military left it collapsed and Sunni V Shia sectarian violence returned to Iraq with a vengeance.
The US might just have got away with leaving a very violent Iraq but one in which the Iraqi government remained in overall control if the US hadn't at the same time been supporting the war in neighbouring Syria. That conflict has never been about a popular uprising against an illegitimate government and these days isn't even about the overthrow of the Syrian government. Instead it is a conflict being carried out by the most extreme Sunni extremists. The most active of these groups recently has been the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). As their name suggests they are originally from Iraq and don't want to liberate Syria so much as re-establish the Levant which is a nation from the time of the Prophet Mohamed made up of parts of Syria, parts of Lebanon, parts of Turkey and parts of Iraq. The reason why they want to re-establish the Levant is that according to Sunni prophecy it is the place where the Messiah will appear atop of a white minaret in order to start the ultimate war between good and evil that will eventually bring about the end of the world. Of course according to Shia prophecy the Levant is where followers of the false prophet (Sunnis) will raise the army that will eventually be destroyed by followers of the true prophet (Shias) paving the way for the arrival of the Messiah. Not that we're dealing with complete lunatics or anything.
The support in terms of finance, weapons, training and diplomatic legitimacy that the international community including the US has been giving to these insurgent groups in Syria (al-Nusra Front and other are just as bad) has caused them to become increasing strong and increasingly powerful. So in October 2013 ISIL which controls most of north-eastern Syria turned their attentions back to Anbar province in Iraq and by January 2014 had expelled the Iraqi government from the province that makes up much of western Iraq. This makes it increasingly likely that Iraq will fragment into a Kurdish region in the north and a Shia region in the east with the west becoming part of the wider Levant warzone. Obviously this caused the Iraqi government to turn to the US for help to defeat the ISIL and re-take Anbar province. Unfortunately in order for the US to help Obama would first have to admit that he'd made a horrific mistake by withdrawing US troops from Iraq in the first place and then also admit that he'd made another horrific mistake by supporting the insurgency in Syria. So as has become something of the hallmark of his Presidency Obama instead ducked the issue and did absolutely nothing.
This lack of leadership obviously has a negative effect on US interests in Iraq but also has a wider knock-on effect on US interests in Afghanistan. As you've probably worked out by now Obama is hell-bent on withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 in the hope this will boost the Democrats chances at November's mid-term elections. The problem is that everybody knows that it is far too soon for the US to withdraw from Afghanistan and it is universally accepted that following that withdrawal large parts of the country will fall back under the control of the Taliban.
This is so obvious that even the US have given up on negotiating a way to stop the Afghan government from collapsing. Instead they're trying to strike a deal with Karzai and his cronies that would see just enough US troops remain in the country to protect Karzai and associates economic interests such as so-called rare earth mineral mines. In return Karzai and associates would of course be expected to give US companies preferential treatment in concessions to operate those mines. Unfortunately the way the US has left the Iraqi government hanging in the wind over Anbar is only likely to encourage Karzai and associates to look towards more -shall we say informal - relationships to protect their economic interests and a complete withdrawal of US troops. Having been the lead actor in the formal invasion and occupation of Afghanistan the US would of course be the least well placed to enter into this type of informal arrangement.
16:30 on 20/1/14 (UK date).
Upon winning the 2008 Presidential Election Barack Obama realised that American voters were weary of the wars in Afghanistan and particularly in Iraq. Calculating that this might adversely effect his chances of winning the 2012 Presidential Election Obama made it his mission to pull all US troops out of Iraq before that election regardless of the cost. The problem was that the situation in Iraq was nowhere near ready for a US troop withdrawal.
Under the rule of Saddam Hussein Iraq's Sunnis and Shias were played off against each other in order to justify the continuation of the dictatorship. So when Hussein fell Iraq's Sunnis and Shias embarked on a brutal sectarian war. As the Sunnis were linked to al-Qaeda and the Shias were better organised the US looked to the Shias to build a new Iraqi government. The problem was that the sectarian strife continued after the formation of the government with Iraq's Sunnis largely refusing to co-operate with the Shia dominated government and the Shia dominated government acting in a way that was biased towards Iraq's Shias at the expense of the Sunnis. Some progress was made in improving the situation during the 2006/7 "Awakening" or "Sahwa" in which Sunni tribal leaders in mainly western Iraq were persuaded to side with the US military against al-Qaeda militants. Unfortunately this alliance didn't really transfer to the Iraqi government so when the US military left it collapsed and Sunni V Shia sectarian violence returned to Iraq with a vengeance.
The US might just have got away with leaving a very violent Iraq but one in which the Iraqi government remained in overall control if the US hadn't at the same time been supporting the war in neighbouring Syria. That conflict has never been about a popular uprising against an illegitimate government and these days isn't even about the overthrow of the Syrian government. Instead it is a conflict being carried out by the most extreme Sunni extremists. The most active of these groups recently has been the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). As their name suggests they are originally from Iraq and don't want to liberate Syria so much as re-establish the Levant which is a nation from the time of the Prophet Mohamed made up of parts of Syria, parts of Lebanon, parts of Turkey and parts of Iraq. The reason why they want to re-establish the Levant is that according to Sunni prophecy it is the place where the Messiah will appear atop of a white minaret in order to start the ultimate war between good and evil that will eventually bring about the end of the world. Of course according to Shia prophecy the Levant is where followers of the false prophet (Sunnis) will raise the army that will eventually be destroyed by followers of the true prophet (Shias) paving the way for the arrival of the Messiah. Not that we're dealing with complete lunatics or anything.
The support in terms of finance, weapons, training and diplomatic legitimacy that the international community including the US has been giving to these insurgent groups in Syria (al-Nusra Front and other are just as bad) has caused them to become increasing strong and increasingly powerful. So in October 2013 ISIL which controls most of north-eastern Syria turned their attentions back to Anbar province in Iraq and by January 2014 had expelled the Iraqi government from the province that makes up much of western Iraq. This makes it increasingly likely that Iraq will fragment into a Kurdish region in the north and a Shia region in the east with the west becoming part of the wider Levant warzone. Obviously this caused the Iraqi government to turn to the US for help to defeat the ISIL and re-take Anbar province. Unfortunately in order for the US to help Obama would first have to admit that he'd made a horrific mistake by withdrawing US troops from Iraq in the first place and then also admit that he'd made another horrific mistake by supporting the insurgency in Syria. So as has become something of the hallmark of his Presidency Obama instead ducked the issue and did absolutely nothing.
This lack of leadership obviously has a negative effect on US interests in Iraq but also has a wider knock-on effect on US interests in Afghanistan. As you've probably worked out by now Obama is hell-bent on withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 in the hope this will boost the Democrats chances at November's mid-term elections. The problem is that everybody knows that it is far too soon for the US to withdraw from Afghanistan and it is universally accepted that following that withdrawal large parts of the country will fall back under the control of the Taliban.
This is so obvious that even the US have given up on negotiating a way to stop the Afghan government from collapsing. Instead they're trying to strike a deal with Karzai and his cronies that would see just enough US troops remain in the country to protect Karzai and associates economic interests such as so-called rare earth mineral mines. In return Karzai and associates would of course be expected to give US companies preferential treatment in concessions to operate those mines. Unfortunately the way the US has left the Iraqi government hanging in the wind over Anbar is only likely to encourage Karzai and associates to look towards more -shall we say informal - relationships to protect their economic interests and a complete withdrawal of US troops. Having been the lead actor in the formal invasion and occupation of Afghanistan the US would of course be the least well placed to enter into this type of informal arrangement.
16:30 on 20/1/14 (UK date).
Sunday, 19 January 2014
CBB is a Hard Task Master.
In my previous post on the subject I mentioned that the atmosphere in the Celebrity Big Brother house had become quite poisonous following a brutal argument between Jim Davidson and Linda Nolan on Wednesday (15/1/14) night through to Thursday (16/1/14) morning. Since then Big Brother has been using a series of special tasks to lighten the mood.
The first of these which had probably already been scheduled took place and centred around Liz Jones. A career journalist and columnist Liz Jones is highly neurotic and slightly deaf which makes it difficult for her to keep up with the goings on in the house. As a result rather then being a participant in the show Liz has acted more as a ghostly apparition hovering in the back ground. So on Thursday (broadcast Friday - 17/1/14) Big Brother set Liz the task of formally interview some of the other housemates in order to write an article about the show which was then presented to the group. This obviously put Liz into her comfort zone in an effort to bring her out of her shell. This seems to have had some success with Liz now showing an interest in what is going on around her and is occasionally joining in with group discussions. The task also had the effect of bringing the group together by allowing Liz to tell everybody what everybody else has been saying about the two big sources of tension - the fight between Jim and Liz and the saga between Lee Ryan, Jasmine Waltz, Casey Batchelor and Luisa Zissman. Although it wasn't mentioned as part of the task Linda did separately tell Lee a version of what the "Frank Carson's dressing room" incident was all about so that mystery is slowly being solved throughout the group.
Next to come up for the attentions of a special task was Luisa. You may remember she had her confidence badly knocked by the resumption of Lee and Jasmine's relationship and a big argument with Dappy which seemed to focus on who was the most intelligent. So Big Brother called both Luisa and Dappy into the diary room for a special intelligence test/general knowledge quiz. The average score amongst people (in the production office) who'd taken this test was 65%. Luisa scored 69% whilst Dappy scored just 6% labelling him not only as stupid but actually mentally retarded in the medical sense of the term. This obviously boosted Luisa's confidence by declaring her the winner of the argument with Dappy in the eyes of the group. It did though make Dappy very angry with him threatening to walk out of the show if the test task was broadcast. As the task was broadcast and with Dappy not leaving the show it goes with out saying that he ended up backing. That has probably got something to do with the fact that if he'd quit Dappy wouldn't have got paid and he is currently so poor that last week bailiffs threatened to force entry into the house to serve him with repossession notices.
On Friday (17/1/13) which was broadcast on Saturday (18/1/13) Lee was told that one of his superfans had won a competition so would get to spend some asking him questions. This was all fake with the superfan being an actress and her questions being set by other housemates who were watching the whole thing live via videofeed. This task of course got the group to agree with each other that Lee is in fact an idiot and have a good laugh at his expense. As Lee didn't realise the who task was fake the housemates were all rewarded with a morale boosting takeaway dinner and lots and lots of alcohol. This led to a very riotous party in which the female housemates divulged secrets about their sex lives (Liz apparently lost her virginity at 30 whilst Casey has apparently never experienced an orgasm with a man) to each other and multiple renditions of a very rude song about Lionel Blair. Later Luisa and Dappy ended up in the shower together but the relationship between the two was rather summed up when Dappy said; "I don't want to be the first to have sex in the house" to which Luisa curtly replied; "We're not going to have sex" highlighting that Dappy really isn't bright enough to work out when Luisa's mucking about and playing things for laughs.
With all this going on it is quite hard to assess how the argument with Jim has affected Linda. However the upside of them having a showbiz feud that has been going on for the best part of 40 years is that it means they've both been in show business for 40 years. That gives them the experience and professionalism to know that sometimes they've got to put their personal differences aside for the good of the show and that seems to be largely what is happening. Plus after 40 years of arguing I doubt there's much new they can say to offend each other. This putting a brave face on things does come at an emotional cost though and I am somewhat worried that Linda will have to pay a higher price by being forced to re-live the grief at the death of her husband and on Thursday and Friday in her quieter moments Linda did appear to be visibly depressed. However in Friday night's drinking session Linda had cheered up noticeably cracking dirty jokes and laughing loudly.
The big winner from the twin arguments has been Luisa who has shot from being a whipped dog to being the house's alpha female in the space of a few days. Obviously with Jasmine's eviction on Wednesday the competition between Luisa and Lee for Jasmine's affections ended. Also successfully setting Jim up to get wiped out by Linda has helped to boost Luisa's confidence. The main difference though seems to be the way in which Lee and Dappy have both made fools of themselves to the extent that Luisa no longer sees them as potential suitors or rivals but as young children who need mothering. As the mother of - I believe a 5 year old daughter - this is obviously a role in Luisa is extremely comfortable with. So great is the extent of the mothering that Lee and Dappy require Luisa's breasts have once again started lactating milk preparing her to breast-feed a baby once again. This is a fact that Luisa happily shared with Lee and Dappy on Friday and will no doubt provide an interesting talking point for bio-psychologists.
Lionel Blair was of course evicted on Friday. Rather then being a sign of disapproval this seems more a case of Lionel's fans choosing not to vote to support him so he could leave a show which must have been a sort of nightmare for the 82 year old. Being a consummate professional and something of a national treasure Lionel did seem to set this in motion himself when during the week he had a long, late night conversation with Jim. In that conversation Lionel confessed that he had been alive for more years then he had left to live and pointed out that he wanted to spend those remaining years in the company of friends he'd already made rather then meeting new people. Also if you want a good laugh try and track down a copy of a live panel discussion Lionel did with Jasmine on Saturday's companion show "Big Brother's Bit on the Psych." Basically Jasmine challenged Lionel to tell her exactly what he though of her to her face. So he did and the phrase; "I can't stand the f'cking sight of you" might have been used. This was not the reaction Jasmine had been expecting.
16:30 on 19/1/14 (UK date).
The first of these which had probably already been scheduled took place and centred around Liz Jones. A career journalist and columnist Liz Jones is highly neurotic and slightly deaf which makes it difficult for her to keep up with the goings on in the house. As a result rather then being a participant in the show Liz has acted more as a ghostly apparition hovering in the back ground. So on Thursday (broadcast Friday - 17/1/14) Big Brother set Liz the task of formally interview some of the other housemates in order to write an article about the show which was then presented to the group. This obviously put Liz into her comfort zone in an effort to bring her out of her shell. This seems to have had some success with Liz now showing an interest in what is going on around her and is occasionally joining in with group discussions. The task also had the effect of bringing the group together by allowing Liz to tell everybody what everybody else has been saying about the two big sources of tension - the fight between Jim and Liz and the saga between Lee Ryan, Jasmine Waltz, Casey Batchelor and Luisa Zissman. Although it wasn't mentioned as part of the task Linda did separately tell Lee a version of what the "Frank Carson's dressing room" incident was all about so that mystery is slowly being solved throughout the group.
Next to come up for the attentions of a special task was Luisa. You may remember she had her confidence badly knocked by the resumption of Lee and Jasmine's relationship and a big argument with Dappy which seemed to focus on who was the most intelligent. So Big Brother called both Luisa and Dappy into the diary room for a special intelligence test/general knowledge quiz. The average score amongst people (in the production office) who'd taken this test was 65%. Luisa scored 69% whilst Dappy scored just 6% labelling him not only as stupid but actually mentally retarded in the medical sense of the term. This obviously boosted Luisa's confidence by declaring her the winner of the argument with Dappy in the eyes of the group. It did though make Dappy very angry with him threatening to walk out of the show if the test task was broadcast. As the task was broadcast and with Dappy not leaving the show it goes with out saying that he ended up backing. That has probably got something to do with the fact that if he'd quit Dappy wouldn't have got paid and he is currently so poor that last week bailiffs threatened to force entry into the house to serve him with repossession notices.
On Friday (17/1/13) which was broadcast on Saturday (18/1/13) Lee was told that one of his superfans had won a competition so would get to spend some asking him questions. This was all fake with the superfan being an actress and her questions being set by other housemates who were watching the whole thing live via videofeed. This task of course got the group to agree with each other that Lee is in fact an idiot and have a good laugh at his expense. As Lee didn't realise the who task was fake the housemates were all rewarded with a morale boosting takeaway dinner and lots and lots of alcohol. This led to a very riotous party in which the female housemates divulged secrets about their sex lives (Liz apparently lost her virginity at 30 whilst Casey has apparently never experienced an orgasm with a man) to each other and multiple renditions of a very rude song about Lionel Blair. Later Luisa and Dappy ended up in the shower together but the relationship between the two was rather summed up when Dappy said; "I don't want to be the first to have sex in the house" to which Luisa curtly replied; "We're not going to have sex" highlighting that Dappy really isn't bright enough to work out when Luisa's mucking about and playing things for laughs.
With all this going on it is quite hard to assess how the argument with Jim has affected Linda. However the upside of them having a showbiz feud that has been going on for the best part of 40 years is that it means they've both been in show business for 40 years. That gives them the experience and professionalism to know that sometimes they've got to put their personal differences aside for the good of the show and that seems to be largely what is happening. Plus after 40 years of arguing I doubt there's much new they can say to offend each other. This putting a brave face on things does come at an emotional cost though and I am somewhat worried that Linda will have to pay a higher price by being forced to re-live the grief at the death of her husband and on Thursday and Friday in her quieter moments Linda did appear to be visibly depressed. However in Friday night's drinking session Linda had cheered up noticeably cracking dirty jokes and laughing loudly.
The big winner from the twin arguments has been Luisa who has shot from being a whipped dog to being the house's alpha female in the space of a few days. Obviously with Jasmine's eviction on Wednesday the competition between Luisa and Lee for Jasmine's affections ended. Also successfully setting Jim up to get wiped out by Linda has helped to boost Luisa's confidence. The main difference though seems to be the way in which Lee and Dappy have both made fools of themselves to the extent that Luisa no longer sees them as potential suitors or rivals but as young children who need mothering. As the mother of - I believe a 5 year old daughter - this is obviously a role in Luisa is extremely comfortable with. So great is the extent of the mothering that Lee and Dappy require Luisa's breasts have once again started lactating milk preparing her to breast-feed a baby once again. This is a fact that Luisa happily shared with Lee and Dappy on Friday and will no doubt provide an interesting talking point for bio-psychologists.
Lionel Blair was of course evicted on Friday. Rather then being a sign of disapproval this seems more a case of Lionel's fans choosing not to vote to support him so he could leave a show which must have been a sort of nightmare for the 82 year old. Being a consummate professional and something of a national treasure Lionel did seem to set this in motion himself when during the week he had a long, late night conversation with Jim. In that conversation Lionel confessed that he had been alive for more years then he had left to live and pointed out that he wanted to spend those remaining years in the company of friends he'd already made rather then meeting new people. Also if you want a good laugh try and track down a copy of a live panel discussion Lionel did with Jasmine on Saturday's companion show "Big Brother's Bit on the Psych." Basically Jasmine challenged Lionel to tell her exactly what he though of her to her face. So he did and the phrase; "I can't stand the f'cking sight of you" might have been used. This was not the reaction Jasmine had been expecting.
16:30 on 19/1/14 (UK date).
Rihanna in Brazil.
For the past week Rihanna has been languishing in Brazil following a photoshoot for Vogue magazine. If you've not been aware of this do not worry. With the exception of Japanese 787 Dreamliners being grounded in another plea for sanity from an old ally and the unfortunate killing of water protesters in South Africa international reaction to this development has pretty much been nil.
As I explained when the trip was announced Vogue magazine invited Rihanna to Brazil in order to reduce the pressure for a suicidal South American leg of the Diamonds World Tour by giving the Brazilians access to Rihanna. Rather then trying to give the Brazilians some sort of competitive advantage the objective was to equip the Brazilians to cope with the special pressures put upon them through the hosting of the 2014 football World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. Due to her appearance in the 2012 para-Olympic closing ceremony Rihanna is of course part of the package of issues handed over from the UK to Brazil.
Rihanna's CIA handlers/Live Nation (the management) of course gave their permission for the trip in the hope that it would trick Argentina or other South American nations into demanding Diamonds World Tour concerts by making them think that Brazil was being given some great secret about Rihanna. To that end the trip coincided with the release of Rihanna's collaboration with Shakira "Can't Remember to Forget You." Releasing new material is always an anxious time for an artist and this collaboration focused on some very hard truths for Rihanna about her life.
To be honest no-one has seemed that interested at all about what Rihanna's been up to in Brazil. However the fact that Rihanna has been giving us all the silent treatment whilst in Brazil has got the Brazilians a little worried that they may be accused of keeping secrets. So someone started rumour that Vogue had banned Rihanna from using social media (Twitter, Instagram etc) in order to stop the contents of her interview with the magazine leaking out and damaging sales. This led to a bit of a Twitter campaign by Rihanna fans against Vogue magazine which helped send out the message that Rihanna's Brazilian hosts weren't particularly happy about the situation either.
The reasons behind Rihanna's relative silence is actually more complex and more mundane then anyone formally putting a gagging order on her. It is currently January. Being the month that is marked out by the fact that it is simply not Christmas anymore no-one feels particularly chatty in January. This problem is more acute for Rihanna because while her career isn't totally in ruins just yet absolutely everyone around her seems wholly dedicated to making sure that her career is totally destroyed as soon as possible. This mild depression and anxiety has meant that Rihanna has been in a far from talkative mood since long before she headed off for Brazil.
Therefore I suppose the whole thing is quite a good example of the more subtle manipulation the management exert over Rihanna. Knowing that Rihanna is already in quite a quiet and pensive mood and knowing that the pressure of the release of the Shakira collaboration would make the situation worse no-one needed to risk issuing a formal gagging order. That's because they knew the way that Rihanna would respond to the situation would take care of the problem without them having to do anything.
12:10 on 19/1/14 (UK date).
As I explained when the trip was announced Vogue magazine invited Rihanna to Brazil in order to reduce the pressure for a suicidal South American leg of the Diamonds World Tour by giving the Brazilians access to Rihanna. Rather then trying to give the Brazilians some sort of competitive advantage the objective was to equip the Brazilians to cope with the special pressures put upon them through the hosting of the 2014 football World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. Due to her appearance in the 2012 para-Olympic closing ceremony Rihanna is of course part of the package of issues handed over from the UK to Brazil.
Rihanna's CIA handlers/Live Nation (the management) of course gave their permission for the trip in the hope that it would trick Argentina or other South American nations into demanding Diamonds World Tour concerts by making them think that Brazil was being given some great secret about Rihanna. To that end the trip coincided with the release of Rihanna's collaboration with Shakira "Can't Remember to Forget You." Releasing new material is always an anxious time for an artist and this collaboration focused on some very hard truths for Rihanna about her life.
To be honest no-one has seemed that interested at all about what Rihanna's been up to in Brazil. However the fact that Rihanna has been giving us all the silent treatment whilst in Brazil has got the Brazilians a little worried that they may be accused of keeping secrets. So someone started rumour that Vogue had banned Rihanna from using social media (Twitter, Instagram etc) in order to stop the contents of her interview with the magazine leaking out and damaging sales. This led to a bit of a Twitter campaign by Rihanna fans against Vogue magazine which helped send out the message that Rihanna's Brazilian hosts weren't particularly happy about the situation either.
The reasons behind Rihanna's relative silence is actually more complex and more mundane then anyone formally putting a gagging order on her. It is currently January. Being the month that is marked out by the fact that it is simply not Christmas anymore no-one feels particularly chatty in January. This problem is more acute for Rihanna because while her career isn't totally in ruins just yet absolutely everyone around her seems wholly dedicated to making sure that her career is totally destroyed as soon as possible. This mild depression and anxiety has meant that Rihanna has been in a far from talkative mood since long before she headed off for Brazil.
Therefore I suppose the whole thing is quite a good example of the more subtle manipulation the management exert over Rihanna. Knowing that Rihanna is already in quite a quiet and pensive mood and knowing that the pressure of the release of the Shakira collaboration would make the situation worse no-one needed to risk issuing a formal gagging order. That's because they knew the way that Rihanna would respond to the situation would take care of the problem without them having to do anything.
12:10 on 19/1/14 (UK date).
Saturday, 18 January 2014
The Mikaeel Kular Investigation.
With the US' Rihanna operation turning into a bit of a ghost town the UK has decided that it is now their moment in the spotlight. For this the UK has been relying on its favourite topic- child sex abuse. So in the past week we've had a frankly less then earth shattering BBC News investigation that British paedophiles use Internet web-cams to sexually abuse children in specifically the Philippines and by implication Thailand and Cambodia.
This past week has also seen the start of several high-profile celebrity child sex abuse trials stemming from the Jimmy Savile investigation. The most notable of these has been the trial of William Roache. Through a very bizarre interview about child-sex abuse given to New Zealand television Roache was of course used to lay out the UK's objectives for Rihanna's concerts in Australia and New Zealand.
The problem is that the UK seems to be constantly going on about child sex abuse as if it were one of its favourite hobbies. Therefore all these trials and news investigations have somewhat faded into the general background noise. So in an effort to add an element of interest stirring drama to the issue we've had the search for Mikaeel Kular a three year old boy who was reported missing from his bed in Scotland by his mother at around 07:15 on Thursday (16/1/14). As it has always seemed unlikely that a three year old would be able to get dressed and leave the family apartment building on his own the suspicion has always been that he was kidnapped by paedophiles.
With no evidence to prove otherwise though the police began by treating this as a missing persons case and appealed to the local and national media for help. This led to the case getting almost wall to wall coverage with Sky News in particular seeming to cover no other news story. The police search operation seems to have been pretty standard with the police setting up a cordoned off search area and then bringing lots of extra officers to methodically search this large cordoned area. On Friday (17/1/14) the police set up search teams made up of members of the public supervised by the police. This was extremely similar to the scenes that followed the disappearance of April Jones in October 2012.
Despite all these well intentioned search efforts the thing that has been at the back of everybody's mind is that Mikaeel mother's claim that she put him to bed at around 21:00 on Wednesday (15/1/14) and then overnight he either voluntarily left or was kidnapped from the family home without her noticing is a little difficult to believe. That draws comparisons between this case and the Madeline McCann case whose parents claim was abducted by Saudi Arabian, paedophile, gypsy people smugglers from their holiday villa in Portugal in 2007. Everyone else though thinks that the McCanns simply killed their daughter and were then forced to make up increasingly elaborate lies to cover up that fact.
Since then the McCann case has become a device for the UK to discuss a whole range of things will a whole range of people but has always been focused on the UK's difficult relationship with the European Union (EU). For example there is currently a UK led police investigation into the McCann case going on in Portugal which is rumoured to be on the brink of yielding fresh breakthroughs and the Portuguese detective originally in charge of the case is currently on trial for liable over a book in which he claimed Madeline McCann was killed by her parents.
At around 00:00 today (when I'm normally looking at porn) the police announced that they had discovered a body in a house far outside the search area. Pending formal identification the police believe the body to be that of Mikaeel Kular. It has since emerged that the house in which the body was found belongs to Mikaeel's aunt, used to be his family home and his mother has been detained by the police. Due to a small foible with the Scottish legal system "detained" in Scotland means basically the same as "arrested" does in the rest of the UK and in Scotland "arrested" means basically the same as "charged" does in the rest of the UK. This is actually quite similar to the aguido system used in Portugal.
So while I think the primary purpose is to cause confusion within the EU and beyond the UK's position does seem to have shifted from criticising Portugal for claiming that Madeline McCann was killed by her parents to criticising Portugal for conducting too sloppy an investigation to prove that Madeline McCann was killed by her parents.
Finally along with the Glasgow helicopter crash this seems intended to give the impression of stoking up anti-UK feeling within Scotland ahead of the 2014 referendum on independence which at the moment is pretty much a done deal for the "No" campaign.
11:35 on 18/1/14 (UK date).
This past week has also seen the start of several high-profile celebrity child sex abuse trials stemming from the Jimmy Savile investigation. The most notable of these has been the trial of William Roache. Through a very bizarre interview about child-sex abuse given to New Zealand television Roache was of course used to lay out the UK's objectives for Rihanna's concerts in Australia and New Zealand.
The problem is that the UK seems to be constantly going on about child sex abuse as if it were one of its favourite hobbies. Therefore all these trials and news investigations have somewhat faded into the general background noise. So in an effort to add an element of interest stirring drama to the issue we've had the search for Mikaeel Kular a three year old boy who was reported missing from his bed in Scotland by his mother at around 07:15 on Thursday (16/1/14). As it has always seemed unlikely that a three year old would be able to get dressed and leave the family apartment building on his own the suspicion has always been that he was kidnapped by paedophiles.
With no evidence to prove otherwise though the police began by treating this as a missing persons case and appealed to the local and national media for help. This led to the case getting almost wall to wall coverage with Sky News in particular seeming to cover no other news story. The police search operation seems to have been pretty standard with the police setting up a cordoned off search area and then bringing lots of extra officers to methodically search this large cordoned area. On Friday (17/1/14) the police set up search teams made up of members of the public supervised by the police. This was extremely similar to the scenes that followed the disappearance of April Jones in October 2012.
Despite all these well intentioned search efforts the thing that has been at the back of everybody's mind is that Mikaeel mother's claim that she put him to bed at around 21:00 on Wednesday (15/1/14) and then overnight he either voluntarily left or was kidnapped from the family home without her noticing is a little difficult to believe. That draws comparisons between this case and the Madeline McCann case whose parents claim was abducted by Saudi Arabian, paedophile, gypsy people smugglers from their holiday villa in Portugal in 2007. Everyone else though thinks that the McCanns simply killed their daughter and were then forced to make up increasingly elaborate lies to cover up that fact.
Since then the McCann case has become a device for the UK to discuss a whole range of things will a whole range of people but has always been focused on the UK's difficult relationship with the European Union (EU). For example there is currently a UK led police investigation into the McCann case going on in Portugal which is rumoured to be on the brink of yielding fresh breakthroughs and the Portuguese detective originally in charge of the case is currently on trial for liable over a book in which he claimed Madeline McCann was killed by her parents.
At around 00:00 today (when I'm normally looking at porn) the police announced that they had discovered a body in a house far outside the search area. Pending formal identification the police believe the body to be that of Mikaeel Kular. It has since emerged that the house in which the body was found belongs to Mikaeel's aunt, used to be his family home and his mother has been detained by the police. Due to a small foible with the Scottish legal system "detained" in Scotland means basically the same as "arrested" does in the rest of the UK and in Scotland "arrested" means basically the same as "charged" does in the rest of the UK. This is actually quite similar to the aguido system used in Portugal.
So while I think the primary purpose is to cause confusion within the EU and beyond the UK's position does seem to have shifted from criticising Portugal for claiming that Madeline McCann was killed by her parents to criticising Portugal for conducting too sloppy an investigation to prove that Madeline McCann was killed by her parents.
Finally along with the Glasgow helicopter crash this seems intended to give the impression of stoking up anti-UK feeling within Scotland ahead of the 2014 referendum on independence which at the moment is pretty much a done deal for the "No" campaign.
11:35 on 18/1/14 (UK date).
Friday, 17 January 2014
CBB - More Addictive Than Codeine
If you've been following my Twitter feed you'd know that I recently sprained my ankle and have been moaning about it ever since. On Wednesday (15/1/14) as I was starting to get bored of Celebrity Big Brother (CBB) I finally relented and took some codeine for the pain. Coming from the same family as morphine and heroin codeine is mildly addictive. That means once one dose has started to wear off it is really tempting to reach for another one. However on Thursday (16/1/14) I managed to stay strong and stuck to ibuprofen despite limping up to the barbers for a haircut. Sadly though it was much harder to steer clear of CBB.
This was perhaps fortunate because Thursday's episode which showed events from Wednesday through to early on Thursday morning focused on a massive argument between Jim Davidson and Linda Nolan. As Jim and Linda have known each other for a long time this has always been bubbling along in the background. However what brought it to the surface has been the tension created by the resumption of the relationship between Lee Ryan and Jasmine Waltz at the expense of Casey Batchelor.
The argument began in the early evening when Linda, Liz Jones and Luisa Zissman were discussing Luisa's experience as a single mother. In what seemed like a clumsy but genuine attempt to join in the conversation Jim asked if Luisa missed having a husband in her life. This prompted Linda to blow up at Jim accusing him of being a misogynist, sexist and general women hater. Jim responded by walking away and complaining about it to a group who were outside smoking in the garden. Linda overheard this and called Jim back into the kitchen to have a further go at him. Having had a drink by this point Jim responded by telling Linda that she should grow up and go to bed to get some sleep before walking away again.
After Linda had gone to bed Jim was discussing the argument with Luisa and others when he suggested that Linda's hatred of him stemmed from a mysterious incident that happened in fellow comedian Frank Carson's dressing room many years ago. Jim said this in the hope that Luisa would then go and ask Linda about the incident. Perhaps being slow on the uptake or not that easy to manipulate Luisa waited until Jim specifically told her to go and ask Linda about the incident in Frank Carson's dressing room. Still not being Jim Davidson's biggest fan Luisa immediately then went off to wake Linda up to tell Linda that Jim had told her to ask Linda about the incident in Frank Carson's dressing room nod doubt in the hope it would cause trouble for Jim.
Although neither Jim nor Linda told the story so none of the other housemates know about it the "incident in Frank Carson's dressing room" refers to a theatre in Blackpool, UK which had been experiencing a spate of thefts from performers dressing rooms and was just down the road from a theatre where Linda Nolan was performing during the mid-1990's. In response to the thefts the theatre installed surveillance cameras in the dressing rooms and one - in Frank Carson's dressing room - caught Linda Nolan's husband and manager, Brian Hudson stealing GBP20 from a wallet. Although the other thefts were never solved Hudson plead guilty to this petty theft in Court and was fined. This incident occurred at a time of extreme financial hardship for Linda and her husband which led to Nolan being declared bankrupt a few months later. Brian Hudson died in 2007 so although everything he was saying is true this was a particularly heavy blow for Jim to land on Linda.
Linda obviously reacted to this by leaping out of bed and confronting Jim in the garden calling him all sorts of names but generally accusing him of being a small and cowardly man for sending Luisa to bring up the incident rather then saying it to her face. Linda then went back off to bed in floods of tears to be comforted by other housemates. This tension between Linda and Jim is leading to the formation of two distinct camps with the girls - Luisa, Casey and Sam Faiers - rallying around Linda and the boys - Dappy and Lee - rallying around Jim.
Obviously the ferocity of the argument has created a very nasty atmosphere in the house with the mystery of what it is all about only making things worse. The obvious solution to this would be to further goad Jim and Linda into a big, air-clearing argument. However the history between Jim and Linda seems so long and acrimonious I'm worried about how big that big argument will be how long it will last for. An alternative could be force Jim and Linda into a room together for an extended period as part of a task. Perhaps a better alternative would be to let the secret slip so other housemates know what the argument is about and let the group self-regulate. However the issue is not exactly clear cut so this could lead to the deepening of factional divisions. Therefore it might be an idea to guide the group by having it be seen that Jim was in the wrong by issuing him with a formal warning about bringing up Court cases involving people who are dead.
Although it has been dwarfed by this argument the Lee/Jasmine/Casey/Luisa saga is still causing tension. Realising that there is now no way on earth Casey will take him back Lee has moved on to Luisa. Basically this involved Lee telling Luisa that Casey had told him that that if they pretended to be in a relationship that would help them win the show in order to tempt Luisa into a relationship. Casey has said nothing of the sort and this idea had been implanted in Lee's mind by Jasmine. Unfortunately for Lee the idea was only in Jasmine's mind because Luisa had planted it there. Needless to say this left Luisa staring at Lee as if he was mentally disabled meaning that he is now the house's least eligible bachelor behind Dappy which is one hell of an achievement.
So with all the housemates - except for Linda and Casey - up for eviction tonight it is quite clear that Lee has to go because he's just in the way like a bit of furniture the other housemates keeping bumping into.
17:25 on 17/1/14 (UK date).
This was perhaps fortunate because Thursday's episode which showed events from Wednesday through to early on Thursday morning focused on a massive argument between Jim Davidson and Linda Nolan. As Jim and Linda have known each other for a long time this has always been bubbling along in the background. However what brought it to the surface has been the tension created by the resumption of the relationship between Lee Ryan and Jasmine Waltz at the expense of Casey Batchelor.
The argument began in the early evening when Linda, Liz Jones and Luisa Zissman were discussing Luisa's experience as a single mother. In what seemed like a clumsy but genuine attempt to join in the conversation Jim asked if Luisa missed having a husband in her life. This prompted Linda to blow up at Jim accusing him of being a misogynist, sexist and general women hater. Jim responded by walking away and complaining about it to a group who were outside smoking in the garden. Linda overheard this and called Jim back into the kitchen to have a further go at him. Having had a drink by this point Jim responded by telling Linda that she should grow up and go to bed to get some sleep before walking away again.
After Linda had gone to bed Jim was discussing the argument with Luisa and others when he suggested that Linda's hatred of him stemmed from a mysterious incident that happened in fellow comedian Frank Carson's dressing room many years ago. Jim said this in the hope that Luisa would then go and ask Linda about the incident. Perhaps being slow on the uptake or not that easy to manipulate Luisa waited until Jim specifically told her to go and ask Linda about the incident in Frank Carson's dressing room. Still not being Jim Davidson's biggest fan Luisa immediately then went off to wake Linda up to tell Linda that Jim had told her to ask Linda about the incident in Frank Carson's dressing room nod doubt in the hope it would cause trouble for Jim.
Although neither Jim nor Linda told the story so none of the other housemates know about it the "incident in Frank Carson's dressing room" refers to a theatre in Blackpool, UK which had been experiencing a spate of thefts from performers dressing rooms and was just down the road from a theatre where Linda Nolan was performing during the mid-1990's. In response to the thefts the theatre installed surveillance cameras in the dressing rooms and one - in Frank Carson's dressing room - caught Linda Nolan's husband and manager, Brian Hudson stealing GBP20 from a wallet. Although the other thefts were never solved Hudson plead guilty to this petty theft in Court and was fined. This incident occurred at a time of extreme financial hardship for Linda and her husband which led to Nolan being declared bankrupt a few months later. Brian Hudson died in 2007 so although everything he was saying is true this was a particularly heavy blow for Jim to land on Linda.
Linda obviously reacted to this by leaping out of bed and confronting Jim in the garden calling him all sorts of names but generally accusing him of being a small and cowardly man for sending Luisa to bring up the incident rather then saying it to her face. Linda then went back off to bed in floods of tears to be comforted by other housemates. This tension between Linda and Jim is leading to the formation of two distinct camps with the girls - Luisa, Casey and Sam Faiers - rallying around Linda and the boys - Dappy and Lee - rallying around Jim.
Obviously the ferocity of the argument has created a very nasty atmosphere in the house with the mystery of what it is all about only making things worse. The obvious solution to this would be to further goad Jim and Linda into a big, air-clearing argument. However the history between Jim and Linda seems so long and acrimonious I'm worried about how big that big argument will be how long it will last for. An alternative could be force Jim and Linda into a room together for an extended period as part of a task. Perhaps a better alternative would be to let the secret slip so other housemates know what the argument is about and let the group self-regulate. However the issue is not exactly clear cut so this could lead to the deepening of factional divisions. Therefore it might be an idea to guide the group by having it be seen that Jim was in the wrong by issuing him with a formal warning about bringing up Court cases involving people who are dead.
Although it has been dwarfed by this argument the Lee/Jasmine/Casey/Luisa saga is still causing tension. Realising that there is now no way on earth Casey will take him back Lee has moved on to Luisa. Basically this involved Lee telling Luisa that Casey had told him that that if they pretended to be in a relationship that would help them win the show in order to tempt Luisa into a relationship. Casey has said nothing of the sort and this idea had been implanted in Lee's mind by Jasmine. Unfortunately for Lee the idea was only in Jasmine's mind because Luisa had planted it there. Needless to say this left Luisa staring at Lee as if he was mentally disabled meaning that he is now the house's least eligible bachelor behind Dappy which is one hell of an achievement.
So with all the housemates - except for Linda and Casey - up for eviction tonight it is quite clear that Lee has to go because he's just in the way like a bit of furniture the other housemates keeping bumping into.
17:25 on 17/1/14 (UK date).
Thursday, 16 January 2014
Egypt's Continuing [sic] Revolution: Month 19, Week 4, Day 5.
On Tuesday (14/1/14) and Wednesday (15/1/14) Egyptians went to the polls for a referendum on the 2013 draft of a new constitution. Although counting began as soon as the polls had closed official, verified results are not yet available. However the preliminary results indicate that support for the constitution was shockingly high at around 97%.
The voter turn-out though seems to tell a very different story. Although it varied wildly across the country from a high of 98% in South Sinai to a low of just 17% in North Sinai the national average was around 30%. When you factor in the number of "No" votes cast this means that 70-75% of Egyptian voters did not vote "Yes" to this constitutional draft.
The picture gets even worse when you consider the reasons given by people interviewed at polling stations to explain why they were voting the way they did. Very few of these people offered any discussion about the constitutional draft or its impacts. Instead they spoke of voting "Yes" in order to show their support for the militarys overthrow of Mohamed Morsi or their opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood. Others indicated that they thought that by voting for the constitution they were taking a stand against the violence and instability that has plagued the nation since the downfall of Mubarak and intensified since the ouster of Morsi. That suggests that those who had read and understood the constitution had stayed away from the referendum in droves whilst those who did vote simply had not understood the question.
This is very bad news for Egypt because rather then marking an important step on the road to a stable and successful democracy it instead seems to place the nation on the brink of either returning to a Mubarak-style military dictatorship or more violence and instability at the hands of a growing number of opponents to the military. Sadly it seems most likely to be a combination of the worst parts of both.
Therefore I think that revolutionary groups within Egypt should now think very hard about lodging legal challenges to the result of the referendum and the arrest of campaigners for a "No" vote would certainly give them cause. Egypt's interim leaders and the Supreme Court should then think very hard about upholding those challenges and overturning the result of this referendum. That way the constitutional draft can go back to committee for essential improvement and another referendum can be held in a few months time.
In the meantime Egypt might like to consider holding a referendum on the ouster of Morsi itself. That will certainly help Egyptians learn about the democratic process enabling them to make a better informed choice at the next constitutional referendum and all subsequent elections.
20:30 on 16/1/14 (UK date).
The voter turn-out though seems to tell a very different story. Although it varied wildly across the country from a high of 98% in South Sinai to a low of just 17% in North Sinai the national average was around 30%. When you factor in the number of "No" votes cast this means that 70-75% of Egyptian voters did not vote "Yes" to this constitutional draft.
The picture gets even worse when you consider the reasons given by people interviewed at polling stations to explain why they were voting the way they did. Very few of these people offered any discussion about the constitutional draft or its impacts. Instead they spoke of voting "Yes" in order to show their support for the militarys overthrow of Mohamed Morsi or their opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood. Others indicated that they thought that by voting for the constitution they were taking a stand against the violence and instability that has plagued the nation since the downfall of Mubarak and intensified since the ouster of Morsi. That suggests that those who had read and understood the constitution had stayed away from the referendum in droves whilst those who did vote simply had not understood the question.
This is very bad news for Egypt because rather then marking an important step on the road to a stable and successful democracy it instead seems to place the nation on the brink of either returning to a Mubarak-style military dictatorship or more violence and instability at the hands of a growing number of opponents to the military. Sadly it seems most likely to be a combination of the worst parts of both.
Therefore I think that revolutionary groups within Egypt should now think very hard about lodging legal challenges to the result of the referendum and the arrest of campaigners for a "No" vote would certainly give them cause. Egypt's interim leaders and the Supreme Court should then think very hard about upholding those challenges and overturning the result of this referendum. That way the constitutional draft can go back to committee for essential improvement and another referendum can be held in a few months time.
In the meantime Egypt might like to consider holding a referendum on the ouster of Morsi itself. That will certainly help Egyptians learn about the democratic process enabling them to make a better informed choice at the next constitutional referendum and all subsequent elections.
20:30 on 16/1/14 (UK date).
I'm Getting a Bit Bored of CBB Now.
You may have noticed that it's been a couple of days since I last did a post on the UK's Celebrity Big Big Brother (CBB). In part that's because I saw it as a bit of an unnecessary distraction during Egypt's constitutional referendum. It is also in part though because things seem to have gone a bit flat.
Take for example Sunday's (12/1/14) task that was broadcast on Monday (13/1/14). This involved the housemates taking part in a medieval inspired tournament that seemed influenced by the primarily British TV show "Game of Thrones." Although it did feature Lee Ryan and Casey Batchelor in a sort of joust it seemed more of an effort to fill time rather then serve some great strategic purpose such as the UFO task and the two rooms challenge.
One housemate who has been consistently interesting though is Luisa Zissman. Although it seems to be being treated as it was a closely guarded secret Luisa Zissman is as ethnically Jewish as her married name would suggest. Born in Heartfordshire this means that she is a British Jew although she's not coming across as particularly observant. However if Luisa were to trace her family tree it seems likely that she would find a lot of middle-eastern Jewish heritage particularly from places such as Lebanon and Syria. This of course explains her success in BBC1's "The Apprentice" show in the summer of 2013 with the UK trying to energise the virulently anti-Semitic insurgency in Syria by linking the Syria government with Jews and by extension Israel.
However in CBB Luisa's ethnic or religious background is entirely secondary to her sex addiction and the emotional causes thereof. This came to the surface quite quickly when Lee and Casey were starting to form a romantic relationship. This prompted Luisa to try to an encourage Jasmine Waltz into a homosexual relationship with her by trying out the moves that predatory lesbians has used on Luisa herself. This quickly blew up in Luisa's face when Jasmine quickly stole Lee out from under Casey's nose and the two formed a sexual relationship. Being wise to most of her tricks after forming the relationship with Lee Jasmine couldn't resist sticking the knife into Luisa.
Therefore following Thursday's (9/1/14) big fight with Dappy and the shock return of Lee and Casey on Friday (10/1/14) Luisa was pretty much broken and left obediently following Jasmine around the house like a whipped dog. However the return of Lee also placed extra pressure on Jasmine. On one hand she seemed to be under orders from her US management to play up the Jessie J/predatory lesbian thing. On the other driven by a mix of genuine lust and a mistaken belief that a 'romance' with Lee would help her win the show Jasmine seemed very keen to re-start her relationship with Lee. However the warnings about having sex on TV issued through the two rooms challenge left her hesitant to do what is needed to keep Lee's attention.
This pressure on Jasmine was making her just about vulnerable enough for Luisa to start to get back in the game. For example on Monday (13/1/14) Luisa got Lee to tell her all about his homosexual relationship with Blue band mate Duncan James in full view of Jasmine. Luisa did this on purpose knowing that despite all the lesbian flirting homosexuality is a major turn-off for Jasmine. This deep seated and aggressive homophobia from Jasmine suggests that her story about having a little b*tch girl whilst in prison might not be the true story.
Therefore I think that if Big Brother had been able to keep this pressure on Jasmine up by keeping her from having sex with Lee - perhaps by giving them both a stern talking or through more subtle means - the balance of power between Luisa and Jasmine would have shifted making for a much more interesting show. As it happens Big Brother was unable to prevent Lee and Jasmine having sex again on Monday (13/1/14) night. This obviously had an extremely negative impact on Luisa who by Tuesday (14/1/14) had resorted to flirting heavily with Dappy which is surely a sign that a woman has hit rock bottom. Therefore whilst there isn't a problem or even an issue at the moment Luisa seems to me the housemate most likely to have to be pulled from the show on mental health grounds.
The resumption of the relationship between Lee and Jasmine obviously also had a negative impact on Casey who sort of having made peace with Lee whilst in the annex was forced to watch Jasmine steal Lee from her all over again. Seeing the impact this had on Casey also of course had a negative impact on the entire house which wasn't help by Jasmine's attempts to rub the relationship in Casey's face by tricking Lee into lots of public displays of affection and, well, dry-humping. This is obviously very bad news for the show because if all the housemates are on edge it makes for very bad television. Sure it might have led to plenty of arguments but those arguments would be boring and bad-tempered driven largely by a general sense of frustration rather then theatric and manipulative and therefore interesting such as Jasmine's repeated attempts to antagonise Jim Davidson.
Therefore it became vitally important that Lee and Jasmine's relationship was brought to a swift end with the eviction of Lee being the obvious solution. Unfortunately the housemates didn't play ball nominating Jim Davidson and Liz Jones to face the public vote. Liz Jones was nominated because she's so dull the only thing she's really said since entering the house is; "I want to go home." Jim Davidson was nominated because, well, he may not be homophobic, sexist or racist but one thing's for sure - Jim Davidson is a mean drunk. Again as Liz and Jim are two housemates Big Brother wants to get its money's worth from the eviction pool was extended to include Jasmine and Luisa who were the next two with the highest number of nominations although they're probably even more valuable to the show.
On Tuesday (14/1/14) Big Brother had a chance to get itself out of trouble when Lee was voted the most annoying housemate and put up for eviction. However because that occurred as part of a task that would take to long to explain Big Brother decided to cancel Lee's nomination. This could prove to be a mistake because on Wednesday (15/1/14) Jasmine was evicted from the show.
Whilst this breaks up the relationship between Lee and Jasmine and Lee has been part of the Jasmine/Luisa/Lee/Casey saga far from being a player I don't think he's really understands the game that's going on. Therefore I struggling to imagine a way in which the show hasn't just begun a slow decline before ending with a whimper. That's unfortunate because prior to the eviction of Jasmine this very strong season of CBB had been extended by four days until January 28th (28/1/14) due to high ratings.
15:50 on 16/1/14 (UK date).
Take for example Sunday's (12/1/14) task that was broadcast on Monday (13/1/14). This involved the housemates taking part in a medieval inspired tournament that seemed influenced by the primarily British TV show "Game of Thrones." Although it did feature Lee Ryan and Casey Batchelor in a sort of joust it seemed more of an effort to fill time rather then serve some great strategic purpose such as the UFO task and the two rooms challenge.
One housemate who has been consistently interesting though is Luisa Zissman. Although it seems to be being treated as it was a closely guarded secret Luisa Zissman is as ethnically Jewish as her married name would suggest. Born in Heartfordshire this means that she is a British Jew although she's not coming across as particularly observant. However if Luisa were to trace her family tree it seems likely that she would find a lot of middle-eastern Jewish heritage particularly from places such as Lebanon and Syria. This of course explains her success in BBC1's "The Apprentice" show in the summer of 2013 with the UK trying to energise the virulently anti-Semitic insurgency in Syria by linking the Syria government with Jews and by extension Israel.
However in CBB Luisa's ethnic or religious background is entirely secondary to her sex addiction and the emotional causes thereof. This came to the surface quite quickly when Lee and Casey were starting to form a romantic relationship. This prompted Luisa to try to an encourage Jasmine Waltz into a homosexual relationship with her by trying out the moves that predatory lesbians has used on Luisa herself. This quickly blew up in Luisa's face when Jasmine quickly stole Lee out from under Casey's nose and the two formed a sexual relationship. Being wise to most of her tricks after forming the relationship with Lee Jasmine couldn't resist sticking the knife into Luisa.
Therefore following Thursday's (9/1/14) big fight with Dappy and the shock return of Lee and Casey on Friday (10/1/14) Luisa was pretty much broken and left obediently following Jasmine around the house like a whipped dog. However the return of Lee also placed extra pressure on Jasmine. On one hand she seemed to be under orders from her US management to play up the Jessie J/predatory lesbian thing. On the other driven by a mix of genuine lust and a mistaken belief that a 'romance' with Lee would help her win the show Jasmine seemed very keen to re-start her relationship with Lee. However the warnings about having sex on TV issued through the two rooms challenge left her hesitant to do what is needed to keep Lee's attention.
This pressure on Jasmine was making her just about vulnerable enough for Luisa to start to get back in the game. For example on Monday (13/1/14) Luisa got Lee to tell her all about his homosexual relationship with Blue band mate Duncan James in full view of Jasmine. Luisa did this on purpose knowing that despite all the lesbian flirting homosexuality is a major turn-off for Jasmine. This deep seated and aggressive homophobia from Jasmine suggests that her story about having a little b*tch girl whilst in prison might not be the true story.
Therefore I think that if Big Brother had been able to keep this pressure on Jasmine up by keeping her from having sex with Lee - perhaps by giving them both a stern talking or through more subtle means - the balance of power between Luisa and Jasmine would have shifted making for a much more interesting show. As it happens Big Brother was unable to prevent Lee and Jasmine having sex again on Monday (13/1/14) night. This obviously had an extremely negative impact on Luisa who by Tuesday (14/1/14) had resorted to flirting heavily with Dappy which is surely a sign that a woman has hit rock bottom. Therefore whilst there isn't a problem or even an issue at the moment Luisa seems to me the housemate most likely to have to be pulled from the show on mental health grounds.
The resumption of the relationship between Lee and Jasmine obviously also had a negative impact on Casey who sort of having made peace with Lee whilst in the annex was forced to watch Jasmine steal Lee from her all over again. Seeing the impact this had on Casey also of course had a negative impact on the entire house which wasn't help by Jasmine's attempts to rub the relationship in Casey's face by tricking Lee into lots of public displays of affection and, well, dry-humping. This is obviously very bad news for the show because if all the housemates are on edge it makes for very bad television. Sure it might have led to plenty of arguments but those arguments would be boring and bad-tempered driven largely by a general sense of frustration rather then theatric and manipulative and therefore interesting such as Jasmine's repeated attempts to antagonise Jim Davidson.
Therefore it became vitally important that Lee and Jasmine's relationship was brought to a swift end with the eviction of Lee being the obvious solution. Unfortunately the housemates didn't play ball nominating Jim Davidson and Liz Jones to face the public vote. Liz Jones was nominated because she's so dull the only thing she's really said since entering the house is; "I want to go home." Jim Davidson was nominated because, well, he may not be homophobic, sexist or racist but one thing's for sure - Jim Davidson is a mean drunk. Again as Liz and Jim are two housemates Big Brother wants to get its money's worth from the eviction pool was extended to include Jasmine and Luisa who were the next two with the highest number of nominations although they're probably even more valuable to the show.
On Tuesday (14/1/14) Big Brother had a chance to get itself out of trouble when Lee was voted the most annoying housemate and put up for eviction. However because that occurred as part of a task that would take to long to explain Big Brother decided to cancel Lee's nomination. This could prove to be a mistake because on Wednesday (15/1/14) Jasmine was evicted from the show.
Whilst this breaks up the relationship between Lee and Jasmine and Lee has been part of the Jasmine/Luisa/Lee/Casey saga far from being a player I don't think he's really understands the game that's going on. Therefore I struggling to imagine a way in which the show hasn't just begun a slow decline before ending with a whimper. That's unfortunate because prior to the eviction of Jasmine this very strong season of CBB had been extended by four days until January 28th (28/1/14) due to high ratings.
15:50 on 16/1/14 (UK date).
Monday, 13 January 2014
Egypt's Continuing Revolution: Month 19, Week 4, Day 2.
On Tuesday (14/1/14) and Wednesday (15/1/14) people in Egypt will be voting whether to adopt or reject the 2013 Constitutional draft. I have already discussed this issue in great detail here; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/egypts-draft-constitution-part-1.html
And here; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/egypts-draft-constitution-part-2.html
And here; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/egypts-draft-constitution-part-3.html
Therefore I don't think there is much need to me to restate why I think the Egyptian people have no option other then to reject this constitution in order to send it back to committee so some critical errors can be corrected.
I should point out though that this re-writing shouldn't take to long because the current draft is 90-95% complete. It is just that the 5-10% that still needs work covers the most important areas such as the role of the military, the structure of the government and the House of Representatives ability to pass budgets.
However the solutions to these problems are actually quite straight forward.
For example to solve the budget problem you simply need to remove the single line of text that says the budget cannot impose new burdens on citizens (Article 124/2013). Similarly to solve the problem of the government bearing no connection to the will of the people you merely need to remove the paragraph that says the Prime Minister cannot be a member of the House of Representatives and replace it with one that says that any nominee for the post of Prime Minister must be an elected member of the House of Representatives (Article 164/2013).
Therefore I don't see any reason why the drafting committee would have to delay the transition roadmap by any more then a maximum of three months in order to produce a constitution that is 100% perfect.
Sadly though I think the biggest delay in producing a re-drafted constitution that I can endorse will come from the military who seem to be using it to grab too much power away from the people.
For example Article 204/2013 which outlines the circumstances in which civilians can be tried by military Courts is far too expansive and should be replaced by a system by which the cases of civilians accused of most crimes against the military are first reviewed by a civilian Judge who then has the option of referring the most serious cases to military Courts.
Also the way the military have sent this draft to referendum whilst it still includes the glaring conflict over whether the President (Article 152/2013) or the Minister of Defence (Article 201/2013) is the ultimate commander of the armed forces suggests to me that the military cannot imagine of a day where the Minister of Defence who must be a member of the armed forces would ever disagree with the President who may be a civilian but also may be a member of the military.
This suspicion that the military intend to turn the overthrow of Morsi into a full blown coup in order to reassert their control of Egypt has only been made worse by recent events. Take for example the bombing of the Police HQ in Mansoura on December 24th (24/12/13). Despite the fact that this attack was almost immediately claimed by the Salafi group Ansar Bait al-Maqdis and everybody in intelligence circles believed that claim Egypt's military dominated interim government blamed the attack on the Muslim Brotherhood and used it to designate the Brotherhood as a terrorist group with no evidence to support that claim. This obviously infuriated the Brotherhood whose supporters took to the streets with renewed vigour and violence.
Then there was the strange - but thankfully now cancelled - plan to put Mohamed Morsi on trial on January 8th (8/1/14) just a week before the constitutional referendum. This would have no doubt made the Brotherhood supporters even more angry and even more violent.
Therefore I think that there has been a deliberate plot on the part of Egypt's military to increase violence and unrest ahead of the constitutional referendum. That way the military could trick the Egyptian people into voting to support any constitution simply because they were so sick of all the violence and unrest. That would clear the way for General el-Sisi's campaign for President which although he's still playing coy most people have accepted has already begun.
I should point out though that I would actually be happy to endorse el-Sisi as Egypt's President for one or even two terms. It's just that before that can happen the constitution that would protect Egypt from el-Sisi turning into another Mubarak-style dictator needs to be perfect. Sadly in this draft the constitution simply isn't there yet so Egyptians must vote no to reject it.
21:00 on 13/1/14 (UK date).
Edited at around 10:30 on 15/1/14 (UK date) to add;
Egypt has obviously entered the second day of voting in the constitutional referendum. During informal interviews with people queueing to cast their ballots everybody says they're voting yes. As the military have been arresting people for campaigning for a no vote this hardly surprising. However there is a lot of genuine support for the constitution. Unfortunately though that is largely because most Egyptians have failed to understand that they are voting simply on the constitution not on whether they support the ouster of Mohamed Morsi or are opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood.
This strikes me as extremely short-sighted because if the constitution is adopted the Brotherhood and their more violent counter-parts are not suddenly going to stop their campaign to destabilise Egypt. This constitution is going to make matters worse because it is fatally flawed and when it goes into force those flaws will become ever more apparent. With every failure of the constitution such as an unelected man being crowned Prime Minister, the economic paralysis that will follow an inevitable failure to pass a budget and every civilian tried and jailed by military Courts for throwing stones at tanks the Brotherhood's argument that the ouster of Morsi was a military coup will be strengthened and they'll be rewarded with more support meaning that the violence and instability will just go on and on.
For example people are already starting to point out that the decision to include a picture of General el-Sisi looks a lot like an attempt to intimidate people into voting in favour of the constitution.
And here; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/egypts-draft-constitution-part-2.html
And here; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/egypts-draft-constitution-part-3.html
Therefore I don't think there is much need to me to restate why I think the Egyptian people have no option other then to reject this constitution in order to send it back to committee so some critical errors can be corrected.
I should point out though that this re-writing shouldn't take to long because the current draft is 90-95% complete. It is just that the 5-10% that still needs work covers the most important areas such as the role of the military, the structure of the government and the House of Representatives ability to pass budgets.
However the solutions to these problems are actually quite straight forward.
For example to solve the budget problem you simply need to remove the single line of text that says the budget cannot impose new burdens on citizens (Article 124/2013). Similarly to solve the problem of the government bearing no connection to the will of the people you merely need to remove the paragraph that says the Prime Minister cannot be a member of the House of Representatives and replace it with one that says that any nominee for the post of Prime Minister must be an elected member of the House of Representatives (Article 164/2013).
Therefore I don't see any reason why the drafting committee would have to delay the transition roadmap by any more then a maximum of three months in order to produce a constitution that is 100% perfect.
Sadly though I think the biggest delay in producing a re-drafted constitution that I can endorse will come from the military who seem to be using it to grab too much power away from the people.
For example Article 204/2013 which outlines the circumstances in which civilians can be tried by military Courts is far too expansive and should be replaced by a system by which the cases of civilians accused of most crimes against the military are first reviewed by a civilian Judge who then has the option of referring the most serious cases to military Courts.
Also the way the military have sent this draft to referendum whilst it still includes the glaring conflict over whether the President (Article 152/2013) or the Minister of Defence (Article 201/2013) is the ultimate commander of the armed forces suggests to me that the military cannot imagine of a day where the Minister of Defence who must be a member of the armed forces would ever disagree with the President who may be a civilian but also may be a member of the military.
This suspicion that the military intend to turn the overthrow of Morsi into a full blown coup in order to reassert their control of Egypt has only been made worse by recent events. Take for example the bombing of the Police HQ in Mansoura on December 24th (24/12/13). Despite the fact that this attack was almost immediately claimed by the Salafi group Ansar Bait al-Maqdis and everybody in intelligence circles believed that claim Egypt's military dominated interim government blamed the attack on the Muslim Brotherhood and used it to designate the Brotherhood as a terrorist group with no evidence to support that claim. This obviously infuriated the Brotherhood whose supporters took to the streets with renewed vigour and violence.
Then there was the strange - but thankfully now cancelled - plan to put Mohamed Morsi on trial on January 8th (8/1/14) just a week before the constitutional referendum. This would have no doubt made the Brotherhood supporters even more angry and even more violent.
Therefore I think that there has been a deliberate plot on the part of Egypt's military to increase violence and unrest ahead of the constitutional referendum. That way the military could trick the Egyptian people into voting to support any constitution simply because they were so sick of all the violence and unrest. That would clear the way for General el-Sisi's campaign for President which although he's still playing coy most people have accepted has already begun.
I should point out though that I would actually be happy to endorse el-Sisi as Egypt's President for one or even two terms. It's just that before that can happen the constitution that would protect Egypt from el-Sisi turning into another Mubarak-style dictator needs to be perfect. Sadly in this draft the constitution simply isn't there yet so Egyptians must vote no to reject it.
21:00 on 13/1/14 (UK date).
Edited at around 10:30 on 15/1/14 (UK date) to add;
Egypt has obviously entered the second day of voting in the constitutional referendum. During informal interviews with people queueing to cast their ballots everybody says they're voting yes. As the military have been arresting people for campaigning for a no vote this hardly surprising. However there is a lot of genuine support for the constitution. Unfortunately though that is largely because most Egyptians have failed to understand that they are voting simply on the constitution not on whether they support the ouster of Mohamed Morsi or are opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood.
This strikes me as extremely short-sighted because if the constitution is adopted the Brotherhood and their more violent counter-parts are not suddenly going to stop their campaign to destabilise Egypt. This constitution is going to make matters worse because it is fatally flawed and when it goes into force those flaws will become ever more apparent. With every failure of the constitution such as an unelected man being crowned Prime Minister, the economic paralysis that will follow an inevitable failure to pass a budget and every civilian tried and jailed by military Courts for throwing stones at tanks the Brotherhood's argument that the ouster of Morsi was a military coup will be strengthened and they'll be rewarded with more support meaning that the violence and instability will just go on and on.
For example people are already starting to point out that the decision to include a picture of General el-Sisi looks a lot like an attempt to intimidate people into voting in favour of the constitution.
Oh What Was Her Name Again.
You know stroppy cow. Used to date what's-his-face. Looked a bit like Whitney Houston.
That's right, Shakira's new song "Can't Remember to Forget You" featuring Rihanna has today been released online; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3VMyHr1gIg&feature=youtu.be and is a relatively strong and heavily ska-infused track. Ska music of course started out in the 1940/50's in Jamaica and formed the basis for reggae music. It was probably made most famous though by the British Skinhead/2 Tone scene of the early-1980's that was born out of punk and featured bands like The Selector and The Specials with their song "Hey Little Rich Girl." The downtuned rock guitars are an obvious but not entirely correct reference to UK Ska's punk roots.
Although I've only given it a couple of quick listens Can't Remember to Forget You is certainly much stronger then I was expecting. If you remember towards the autumn of 2013 Rihanna's CIA handlers/Live Nation (the management) were trying to get her to record the track "Timber" with US artist Pittbull. Unfortunately for them Rihanna was already busy working on this song so the Timber track was eventually released with Ke$ha performing the female role at around the time of the COP19/CMP9 Summit.
Rihanna's tour which was going on at the same time was titled "Diamonds" as a little joke about the damage that Rihanna was going to do to resource rich, sub-Saharan African nations such as the Central African Republic (CAR) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) along with their neighbours such as South Africa. The most important natural resource in these nations and the one that was most relevant to the COP19/CMP9 through the REDD+ program is wood or timber. So if Rihanna had released a track called Timber at around that time it is hard to imagine a way for her to come back from that politically. As such I was expecting Can't Remember to Forget You to be a bit of a rush job drawn up on the back of an envelope in order to keep Rihanna busy and out of trouble.
Shakira of course represents pretty much everything Rihanna isn't. For a start Shakira writes almost all of her own material and manages her own career. Although she's been out of the spotlight in recent years that's because Shakira's been concentrating on her, by all accounts, healthy and fulfilling relationship with Spanish footballer Gerard Pique. In January 2013 the couple celebrated the birth of their first child. Most importantly though Shakira is widely respected within the international development community through her work with the Pies Descalzos (Barefoot) Foundation that she set up and has been running since the age of around 17.
In that we get into the management's reasons for allowing Rihanna to work on the track because Rihanna is never going to come off well from a direct comparison to Shakira. Beyond the immediate damage to Rihanna's reputation there is no doubt some hope that people will believe that in singing the lyrics that Shakira wrote for her the boy that Rihanna can't remember to forget is Chris Brown creating speculation of yet another reunion. However I think that the lyrics about doing anything for that boy is more of a reference about the great efforts we've all had to go to keep Rihanna out of trouble this past year. After all Shakira and I have a little bit of a history even if she's not fully aware of it.
Also there seem to be little attempts to cause a bit of controversy in South America in order to resurrect the Diamonds tour with a South American leg. For example in the second verse the way Rihanna sings the lyric "Laying in his bed" sounds a bit like she's singing "Lenin is dead." Along with Karl Marx Vladimir Lenin is considered one of the father's of Communism which is apparently still popular in parts of South America. Therefore some of the more paranoid leaders in nations such as Venezuela and Bolivia could get the impression that by announcing that "Lenin is Dead" Rihanna is trying to energise an anti-Communist movement which is a huge historical issue on the continent due to the CIA's School of the Americas program.
The main message though is an attempt to continue the discussion about what happens now to Rihanna. With it pretty much accepted that there won't be a South American leg of the Diamonds World Tour the management's plan was that Rihanna would now be back in a hugely damaging relationship with Chris Brown and in the absence of a career in the music industry would be instead be focusing on shoddy charity projects such as VivaGlam and the hideous UNICEF(US) campaign against the Philippines. By getting Rihanna to appear alongside Shakira who is very successful in her charity work on a song about remembering to forget people the management were trying to promote discussion about whether anyone in the business would remember Rihanna's name long enough to give a sh*t what charity work she did.
16:30 on 13/1/14 (UK date).
11/2/3.
That's right, Shakira's new song "Can't Remember to Forget You" featuring Rihanna has today been released online; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3VMyHr1gIg&feature=youtu.be and is a relatively strong and heavily ska-infused track. Ska music of course started out in the 1940/50's in Jamaica and formed the basis for reggae music. It was probably made most famous though by the British Skinhead/2 Tone scene of the early-1980's that was born out of punk and featured bands like The Selector and The Specials with their song "Hey Little Rich Girl." The downtuned rock guitars are an obvious but not entirely correct reference to UK Ska's punk roots.
Although I've only given it a couple of quick listens Can't Remember to Forget You is certainly much stronger then I was expecting. If you remember towards the autumn of 2013 Rihanna's CIA handlers/Live Nation (the management) were trying to get her to record the track "Timber" with US artist Pittbull. Unfortunately for them Rihanna was already busy working on this song so the Timber track was eventually released with Ke$ha performing the female role at around the time of the COP19/CMP9 Summit.
Rihanna's tour which was going on at the same time was titled "Diamonds" as a little joke about the damage that Rihanna was going to do to resource rich, sub-Saharan African nations such as the Central African Republic (CAR) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) along with their neighbours such as South Africa. The most important natural resource in these nations and the one that was most relevant to the COP19/CMP9 through the REDD+ program is wood or timber. So if Rihanna had released a track called Timber at around that time it is hard to imagine a way for her to come back from that politically. As such I was expecting Can't Remember to Forget You to be a bit of a rush job drawn up on the back of an envelope in order to keep Rihanna busy and out of trouble.
Shakira of course represents pretty much everything Rihanna isn't. For a start Shakira writes almost all of her own material and manages her own career. Although she's been out of the spotlight in recent years that's because Shakira's been concentrating on her, by all accounts, healthy and fulfilling relationship with Spanish footballer Gerard Pique. In January 2013 the couple celebrated the birth of their first child. Most importantly though Shakira is widely respected within the international development community through her work with the Pies Descalzos (Barefoot) Foundation that she set up and has been running since the age of around 17.
In that we get into the management's reasons for allowing Rihanna to work on the track because Rihanna is never going to come off well from a direct comparison to Shakira. Beyond the immediate damage to Rihanna's reputation there is no doubt some hope that people will believe that in singing the lyrics that Shakira wrote for her the boy that Rihanna can't remember to forget is Chris Brown creating speculation of yet another reunion. However I think that the lyrics about doing anything for that boy is more of a reference about the great efforts we've all had to go to keep Rihanna out of trouble this past year. After all Shakira and I have a little bit of a history even if she's not fully aware of it.
Also there seem to be little attempts to cause a bit of controversy in South America in order to resurrect the Diamonds tour with a South American leg. For example in the second verse the way Rihanna sings the lyric "Laying in his bed" sounds a bit like she's singing "Lenin is dead." Along with Karl Marx Vladimir Lenin is considered one of the father's of Communism which is apparently still popular in parts of South America. Therefore some of the more paranoid leaders in nations such as Venezuela and Bolivia could get the impression that by announcing that "Lenin is Dead" Rihanna is trying to energise an anti-Communist movement which is a huge historical issue on the continent due to the CIA's School of the Americas program.
The main message though is an attempt to continue the discussion about what happens now to Rihanna. With it pretty much accepted that there won't be a South American leg of the Diamonds World Tour the management's plan was that Rihanna would now be back in a hugely damaging relationship with Chris Brown and in the absence of a career in the music industry would be instead be focusing on shoddy charity projects such as VivaGlam and the hideous UNICEF(US) campaign against the Philippines. By getting Rihanna to appear alongside Shakira who is very successful in her charity work on a song about remembering to forget people the management were trying to promote discussion about whether anyone in the business would remember Rihanna's name long enough to give a sh*t what charity work she did.
16:30 on 13/1/14 (UK date).
11/2/3.
CBB's Not So Saucy Sunday.
I didn't bother write up Saturday's (11/1/14) episode of Celebrity Big Brother because it was entirely dominated by the row between Dappy and Luisa Zissman. If there is any doubt that Dappy lost this argument he ended up bringing up his GCSE results. GCSE's are compulsory exams that all British school children take when they're 16 years old. For most people they are quickly replaced by more meaningful achievements. So even at 17 bringing up your GCSE results in an argument about anything other then your GCSE results just makes you look like a fool.
As for the argument itself rather then being a short shouting match it actually went on for hours with Luisa frequently walking away only for Dappy to effectively stalk her around the house constantly starting up with a new stream of abuse. This has promoted some discussion about whether Dappy should have been given a formal warning about his behaviour. After all unlike Evander Holyfield's comments on homosexuality Dappy was having a direct and negative impact on at least one and possibly all housemates. For example Luisa's subsequent argument with Lionel Blair was simply a result of everybody in the house being stressed out and just really enjoying shouting.
In the end though the group seemed to effectively self-regulate so by Saturday (broadcast Sunday) Dappy had clearly got the message that he'd gone too far. For example when the housemates were rewarded for a task with pictures of their loved ones from home Dappy made a big effort to be seen admiring pictures of Luisa's daughter and apologising for his behaviour. Apart from the TV camera's Dappy also made sure that this apology took place in full view of Jasmine Waltz. That's because - revealing his true motivations - when he was attacking Luisa on Friday Dappy kept cornering Jasmine in a effort to force her to agree with what he was saying about Luisa. Jasmine basically responded to him by staring at him as if he were an idiotic child - a consensus that continued throughout his apology.
The special task that won the housemates the pictures of their loved ones centred around Sam Faiers who has a large reality TV fan base from her appearances in the ITV2 "structured reality" show "The Only Way is Essex" (TOWIE). Although Sam is playing an important role in the house quietly connecting different warring parties and helping keeping everyone's stress levels down this is largely a silent, background role that doesn't get a lot of airtime. Therefore the special task was an effort to give Sam reason to appear in the highlights show. First Sam had to take one housemate aside and tell them that she is attracted to them. Unfortunately she chose Ollie Locke who seems to really have a little bit of a crush on Sam.
Next Sam had to accuse another housemate of gossipping about her behind her back. Sam chose Jasmine and Luisa. This immediately led to Luisa revealing that the only thing the two had said about Sam is that she and Ollie would make a good couple. Falling for it Jasmine immediately responded by accusing her rival Casey Batchelor of telling Sam that she and Luisa had been gossipping in an effort to stir up trouble. As this was completely untrue and perhaps an example of Jasmine projecting aspects her own personality onto other whilst Sam had been called away to speak to Big Brother Jasmine and Casey got into a short but intense shouting match. Needless to say when Sam returned to announce that it had all been made up the atmosphere in the house was awkward to say the least.
The big news from Saturday's events (Sunday's show) was the two rooms task. If you've been reading this in another country and have been shocked by what has been going on in the show don't worry - all the bed hopping means that the show has been getting very close to breaking the rules of what can be broadcast on TV. However I would say that the production staff have been doing a very good job of staying on the right side of the rules. For example it is all broadcast after the watershed when impressionable young viewers are supposed to be in bed asleep. Also rather then showing housemates engaging in sex acts producers have instead only shown enough so that viewers who are already familiar with the subject matter can fill in the blanks for themselves. I'll agree that some of the housemates conversations about what has been going on have been rather descriptive but sexuality is one of the most powerful and important elements of the human condition so it seems a bit childish that we're not allowed to at least discuss it.
The show's lawyers and compliance officers are clearly starting to have had enough of being woken from their beds at 3AM though. So on Saturday (Sunday broadcast) the housemates were split into two groups and sent to two, separate mini-houses (rooms). One room was designated as the "children's house" and involved housemates singing nursery rhymes and playing children's party games and generally acting as if they were presenting a children's TV show. The other room was designated as the "adult house" and involved housemates dressed in BDSM (PVC & leather) style outfits engaging in activities such as pole dancing, toe-sucking and what can only be described as free-form spanking. Try and guess which mini-house Dappy was sent to.
The purpose of this task was of course to remind the housemates that they are on a TV show and that TV show has to appeal to a range of viewers in an effort to get them to moderate their behaviour. What was interesting though is that while Lee Ryan, Jasmine and Luisa were sent to the adult house Jasmine's main rival for Lee's affections Casey was sent to the children's house. This seemed to be an effort to reunite Jasmine with Lee in order to get her to drop the Jessie J/Luisa thing which is coming across as homophobic and could end up testing the bounds of the rules regarding the use of vulnerable people in TV shows. However at the same time being reminded that she can't do the one thing needed to control Lee Jasmine seems to be holding back. She is though seeming to begin to calculate that due to it's large homosexual fan-base homophobia is not the way to win in Celebrity Big Brother.
Probably the most stunning element of the adult room was the way the 85 year Lionel Blair performed his role of S&M policeman with all the gusto that has earned him a reputation as a consummate professional. After the task had ended Lionel went off to take a few minutes to get out of character leaving Jim Davidson to explain that rather then the filth and depravity Lionel was probably most offended by the way the other housemates weren't prepared to take his direction during the task. Jasmine immediately took offence to this rather innocuous comment and spent the rest of the evening trying to wind Jim Davidson up. As I've mentioned Jim Davidson has a reputation for being homophobic so Jasmine seemed to be attempting to temper her own homophobia (which comes from a really deep place) by being seen to give the homophobe a tough time.
11:35 on 13/1/14.
As for the argument itself rather then being a short shouting match it actually went on for hours with Luisa frequently walking away only for Dappy to effectively stalk her around the house constantly starting up with a new stream of abuse. This has promoted some discussion about whether Dappy should have been given a formal warning about his behaviour. After all unlike Evander Holyfield's comments on homosexuality Dappy was having a direct and negative impact on at least one and possibly all housemates. For example Luisa's subsequent argument with Lionel Blair was simply a result of everybody in the house being stressed out and just really enjoying shouting.
In the end though the group seemed to effectively self-regulate so by Saturday (broadcast Sunday) Dappy had clearly got the message that he'd gone too far. For example when the housemates were rewarded for a task with pictures of their loved ones from home Dappy made a big effort to be seen admiring pictures of Luisa's daughter and apologising for his behaviour. Apart from the TV camera's Dappy also made sure that this apology took place in full view of Jasmine Waltz. That's because - revealing his true motivations - when he was attacking Luisa on Friday Dappy kept cornering Jasmine in a effort to force her to agree with what he was saying about Luisa. Jasmine basically responded to him by staring at him as if he were an idiotic child - a consensus that continued throughout his apology.
The special task that won the housemates the pictures of their loved ones centred around Sam Faiers who has a large reality TV fan base from her appearances in the ITV2 "structured reality" show "The Only Way is Essex" (TOWIE). Although Sam is playing an important role in the house quietly connecting different warring parties and helping keeping everyone's stress levels down this is largely a silent, background role that doesn't get a lot of airtime. Therefore the special task was an effort to give Sam reason to appear in the highlights show. First Sam had to take one housemate aside and tell them that she is attracted to them. Unfortunately she chose Ollie Locke who seems to really have a little bit of a crush on Sam.
Next Sam had to accuse another housemate of gossipping about her behind her back. Sam chose Jasmine and Luisa. This immediately led to Luisa revealing that the only thing the two had said about Sam is that she and Ollie would make a good couple. Falling for it Jasmine immediately responded by accusing her rival Casey Batchelor of telling Sam that she and Luisa had been gossipping in an effort to stir up trouble. As this was completely untrue and perhaps an example of Jasmine projecting aspects her own personality onto other whilst Sam had been called away to speak to Big Brother Jasmine and Casey got into a short but intense shouting match. Needless to say when Sam returned to announce that it had all been made up the atmosphere in the house was awkward to say the least.
The big news from Saturday's events (Sunday's show) was the two rooms task. If you've been reading this in another country and have been shocked by what has been going on in the show don't worry - all the bed hopping means that the show has been getting very close to breaking the rules of what can be broadcast on TV. However I would say that the production staff have been doing a very good job of staying on the right side of the rules. For example it is all broadcast after the watershed when impressionable young viewers are supposed to be in bed asleep. Also rather then showing housemates engaging in sex acts producers have instead only shown enough so that viewers who are already familiar with the subject matter can fill in the blanks for themselves. I'll agree that some of the housemates conversations about what has been going on have been rather descriptive but sexuality is one of the most powerful and important elements of the human condition so it seems a bit childish that we're not allowed to at least discuss it.
The show's lawyers and compliance officers are clearly starting to have had enough of being woken from their beds at 3AM though. So on Saturday (Sunday broadcast) the housemates were split into two groups and sent to two, separate mini-houses (rooms). One room was designated as the "children's house" and involved housemates singing nursery rhymes and playing children's party games and generally acting as if they were presenting a children's TV show. The other room was designated as the "adult house" and involved housemates dressed in BDSM (PVC & leather) style outfits engaging in activities such as pole dancing, toe-sucking and what can only be described as free-form spanking. Try and guess which mini-house Dappy was sent to.
The purpose of this task was of course to remind the housemates that they are on a TV show and that TV show has to appeal to a range of viewers in an effort to get them to moderate their behaviour. What was interesting though is that while Lee Ryan, Jasmine and Luisa were sent to the adult house Jasmine's main rival for Lee's affections Casey was sent to the children's house. This seemed to be an effort to reunite Jasmine with Lee in order to get her to drop the Jessie J/Luisa thing which is coming across as homophobic and could end up testing the bounds of the rules regarding the use of vulnerable people in TV shows. However at the same time being reminded that she can't do the one thing needed to control Lee Jasmine seems to be holding back. She is though seeming to begin to calculate that due to it's large homosexual fan-base homophobia is not the way to win in Celebrity Big Brother.
Probably the most stunning element of the adult room was the way the 85 year Lionel Blair performed his role of S&M policeman with all the gusto that has earned him a reputation as a consummate professional. After the task had ended Lionel went off to take a few minutes to get out of character leaving Jim Davidson to explain that rather then the filth and depravity Lionel was probably most offended by the way the other housemates weren't prepared to take his direction during the task. Jasmine immediately took offence to this rather innocuous comment and spent the rest of the evening trying to wind Jim Davidson up. As I've mentioned Jim Davidson has a reputation for being homophobic so Jasmine seemed to be attempting to temper her own homophobia (which comes from a really deep place) by being seen to give the homophobe a tough time.
11:35 on 13/1/14.
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