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Pol(itical) Pol(arisation)

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Log In. How White People Can Support People Of Color Now - BuzzFeed News. Don’t avoid politics this holiday season. Use these 5 tips for productive conversations. 'A cauldron of the baser instincts of humanity': inside Donald Trump's Nevada triumph. There is a moment during Donald Trump’s effusive, ebullient victory speech, following his huge victory in Nevada, when he asks fellow hotel magnate Steve Wynn to stand up.

'A cauldron of the baser instincts of humanity': inside Donald Trump's Nevada triumph

Trump and Wynn are both bombastic personalities with a penchant for self-mythologizing. Trump says that he constantly reminds Wynn that the Trump International Hotel is the best in Las Vegas. If we don’t restore democracy in Europe, the consequences could be dire. Just before the nightmare of the second world war started to explode, the Italian politician and philosopher Antonio Gramsci famously wrote in one of his many prison notebooks: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

If we don’t restore democracy in Europe, the consequences could be dire

Today, we truly live in a time of such morbid symptoms. The naive dream of the marriage between “capitalism and democracy” has died. How do you deal with a story like #piggate? A spin doctor’s view. As a spin doctor, there are two phone calls that make your heart sink: the one from a journalist relaying some excruciating allegation about your boss’s personal life or past history; and the second, the call you have to make to said boss in order to work out your response.

How do you deal with a story like #piggate? A spin doctor’s view

Working for Gordon Brown, a man of Victorian sensibilities and a volatile temper, the second call was invariably greeted with the single word “What?!” The Widening World of Hand-Picked Truths. Untitled. We must stop Angela Merkel’s bullying – or let the forces of austerity win. Angela Merkel is the most monstrous western European leader of this generation.

We must stop Angela Merkel’s bullying – or let the forces of austerity win

Politicians who inflict economic cruelty on a mass scale, trashing the lives of millions as they do so, do not end up in courts to face justice. But Merkel undoubtedly stands tried and convicted in the dock of history already. The EU’s high priests of austerity conjure up the words of Charlie Chaplin’s rousing speech at the end of The Great Dictator: “Machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts”. Charlie Hebdo: Now is the time to uphold freedoms, not give in to fear. Why does it happen?

Charlie Hebdo: Now is the time to uphold freedoms, not give in to fear

Whenever a political outrage is committed, the sensible question is to ask: what does its perpetrator want? What reaction does he seek, and what does he not seek? Twelve dead cannot go unremarked. Charlie Hebdo: Understanding is the least we owe the dead. I’ve just been on Skype with my wife, who’s teaching in Paris.

Charlie Hebdo: Understanding is the least we owe the dead

Our conversation was interrupted by sirens and she took the computer over to the window to show me the view. The street had been cordoned off by police. De verkeerde focus. Ma vie (de Belge) en pays grognon (la France) Dodgy regime? Unruly protesters? Bell Pottinger can help. At first sight, the Curzon Street offices of Bell Pottinger Private are everything a conspiracy theorist could hope for.

Dodgy regime? Unruly protesters? Bell Pottinger can help

Next door, guarded by uniformed police officers with machine guns, squats the immense embassy of Saudi Arabia, a country with which the controversial PR firm's even more controversial chairman, Tim Bell, has had decades of opaque, often defence-related dealings. Beyond the embassy is the rest of Mayfair, where businesses are discreet, ethics are flexible, and rich people with reputations to upgrade are in increasingly plentiful supply. Les « Netocrates », élite « d’arrogants paresseux » qui va diriger le monde. Un frisbee avec le logo de Google à Palo Alto, Californie, en juillet 2013 (C Flanigan/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP) Dans une interview donnée à Wired, le site du magazine consacré aux nouvelles technologies, le cofondateur de The Pirate Bay, site de téléchargement en peer-to-peer, Peter Sunde, s’en prend aux « nerds », ces technophiles avertis, programmeurs et concepteurs en tout genre, qu’il qualifie de « nouvelle élite » : « Nous avons cette haine des politiciens que nous voyons comme corrompus et à qui nous ne faisons plus confiance, alors nous essayons de faire des choses en dehors du périmètre où ils peuvent nous entraver. » Cette terre d’asile, c’est évidemment Internet, et plus particulièrement le secteur des Nouvelles technologies de l’information et des communications (NTIC).

Les « Netocrates », élite « d’arrogants paresseux » qui va diriger le monde

Une élite « d’arrogants paresseux » « Ce sont des paresseux trop arrogants pour descendre dans la rue. Une « technophilie » proche de l’aveuglement : Un an de Manif pour tous : « Tout le monde déteste les cathos comme vous » Le blogueur Koz, « catholique avant d’être de droite », s’est opposé au mariage homo dans la rue et sur les réseaux sociaux.

Un an de Manif pour tous : « Tout le monde déteste les cathos comme vous »

Il nous raconte une année de lutte. Un manifestant tient une pancarte lors de la « Manif pour tous » du 17 novembre 2012 à Paris (Audrey Cerdan/Rue89) Poles Apart. So on the third leg of his foreign tour, Mr.

Poles Apart

Bean Mitt Romney lavished praise on the Polish economy. It wasn’t quite as big a blooper as his praise for Israel’s single-payer-plus-price controls health care system, but it wasn’t good. For one thing, Poland has substantially bigger government than the US; in 2007, that is, pre-crisis, the Polish government spent 42 percent of GDP, compared with 37 in the United States. And despite what Romney claimed, there was no obvious trend toward smaller government; Polish spending as a share of GDP was about the same in 2007 as it had been in 2000. Oh, and universal health care too. Leonarda : quand Le Pen dénonce la lepénisation de la télé. « Je ne vois pas le rapport avec Leonarda pour l’instant. Je voudrais qu’on passe au thème de l“émission.” Il est désarçonné, Yves Calvi. Il a prévu une émission sur Leonarda. C’est écrit sur l’écran : “Le piège Leonarda”.

Noël Mamère : « le mentir vrai », cette détestable pratique de François Hollande. Www.rtbf.be. The royal baby pictures show privilege trying, and failing, to look normal. The Duchess and Duke of Cambridge with their son, Prince George, and their dog, Lupo. Photograph: Michael Middleton/Getty Say cheese! The smiles of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge say it all in their first official photographs with Prince George. Lettre ouverte à un ami de droite. - Le 1er mai 2012 place de l'opéra à Paris Benois Tessier REUTERS - Cher ami, nous n’avons jamais voté de la même façon et pourtant je vous comprends très bien. Ou plutôt, je comprends ceux, qui comme vous, croient en la droite libérale.

Nous partageons bien des choses: l’amour de la France et de la démocratie. Nous croyons au droit des autres de penser autrement que nous. Nous partageons le plaisir de vivre dans un pays ouvert au monde. Dumb and Dumber - By George Lakoff. As the U.S. presidential campaign heats up, both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are piling up money and shoring up their political bases. But they're also going after a few million voters in a handful of swing states -- voters who are considered critical to winning the election. And within this block of voters is a special camp: "low-information voters," or LIVs, a term that keeps popping up in magazines and political blogs.

The term is mainly used by liberals to refer to those who vote conservative against their interests and the best interests of the nation. Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand: Why don’t America liberals have their own canon of writers and thinkers? Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/GettyImages. Ask Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan how he became a conservative and he’ll probably answer by citing a book. It might be Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Or perhaps he’ll come up with Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, or even Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative. All of these books are staples of the modern conservative canon, works with the reputed power to radicalize even the most tepid Republican.

Signal: a journal about international political graphics. Signal no. 2, 2012, published by PM Press. Design: Alec Dunn & Josh MacPhee. Illustration: Røde Mor If you are interested in the use of graphic art and communication in political struggles, don’t miss the latest issue of Signal, which has just come out. The first issue appeared in 2010, and for the last few months Amazon has been sending status updates saying that the new issue would be later than expected. The publishers must have unjammed the logs, though, and in the end it arrived early.