Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Yeah but he didn't say that was the motivation for this particular attack.

it's kinda a twin argument w/ the idea that bin laden wanted to provoke the US into attacking afghanistan so that he'd get more recruits, or that IS beheaded journalists so that the West would attack them + they'd gain legitimacy. i don't doubt that these Western responses might turn out to be advantageous for radical terrorist organizations, but i find all of those 11-dimensional chess explanations for terror pretty silly.

It's not an either / or. There's censorship but there's also a significant amount of signal-boosting from Islamists - spreading the offensive material to ensure that as many people can be outraged as possible. It's perfectly plausible that individual terrorists might be motivated by an effort to censor but to the extent that there's any organised, strategic thinking involved in the broader span of current terrorism, that's clearly not the only rationale. There has been a constant effort to draw groups / governments into conflict, rather than prevent it.

I interpreted it as Not Only But Also

but is that bc they think that Western responses will help galvanize their recruiting or bc they legitimately believe that they are fighting a war against the [decadent] West?

Both, i think.

remember when Oslo got bombed and those teenagers got shot, and everyone said "oh those Islamists" and it turned out to be a neo-Nazi?

No I don't remember everyone blaming Islamists actually.

really? Difficult to verify now but my recollection was a lot of media talk about Islamists, at least in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.

I looked up some old news reports and they all said it was too early to say. iirc Breivik was identified pretty quickly so there wasn't a huge window for speculation. Obviously I can't dig up Twitter reactions from that window but I don't remember many people claiming it was Islamists, only some wondering whether it might be.

fair dos. I did find this on Twitter, lol Denis MacShane: https://twitter.com/DenisMacShane/status/94437818050412545

Anyway I suppose my point is: yes it's likely to be "Islamists" but it's probably too soon to usefully speculate about motives etc.

According to reports, two of the gunmen identified themselves as Al Qaeda.

Heard about a car bombing in front of a synagogue? Obv no idea if related.

fine, speculate away

It's so hard to believe that this was done in the name of the religion of peace

oh ffs

A car explosion that occurred outside of a synagogue in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles was caused by a mechanical failure

so hard to tell whether this update will relieve or disappoint Mordy

I'm very relieved! The need to impute fantasies psychotic violence on the part of ppl who disagree with you is probably projection?

you said it mate

It's not actually that bad a read, but running an article by John Harris about the resurgence of vinyl is just pandering to this thread:
www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jan/07/-sp-vinyls-difficult-comeback

Stopped reading once he got onto the tossers sitting in a room listening reverently to Dark Side Of The Fucking Moon

I enjoyed reading about the pressing plant people but yeah the rest is beyond worthless.

thought it was not actually that bad a read myself

that john harris piece is just great

i enjoyed that article.
i actually met john the evening before the listening session in lulworth that he mentions.
i had intended to go along, but hey, hangovers, and suchlike.
(was part of the camp bestival set up).
we chatted a bit re his infamous funk article.
for all the hate he invites, he was good company and very easy to have a chat with.

He has that tag of "He is a rubbish writer I could do better, signed Various Writers" on anything he does, really.

Found this sentence oddly hilarious: "Blechman founded Maharishi - named after the Hindu word for guru - in 1994, after time spent working in the army surplus trade. "

Perhaps the Guardian could start a spin-off talking heads blog named after the Hindu word for pundit.

Hindu word for pundit = pandit

Pandit Pran McNulty

Fox News gaffe: Twitter reacts

The Guardian
@guardian
Top stories, special features, live blogs and more from http://theguardian.com

Peter Bradshaw

The Guardian, Wednesday 21 January 2015 15.19 GMT

There comes a moment when a trend or meme becomes too irritating to ignore. For me, that moment has come with “negging”.

lol no way

Retaliation from the rightwing twittersphere was swift and violent, as Khalek documented in an exhaustive (and exhausting) post at Alternet. “Move your America hating ass to Iraq, let ISIS rape you then cut your cunt head off, fucking media whore muslim,” wrote a rather unassuming-looking mom named Donna. “Rania, maybe we to take you ass overthere and give it to ISIS … Dumb bitch,” offered a bearded man named Ronald, who enjoys either bass fishing or playing the bass (we may never know). “Waterboarding is far from torture,” explained an army pilot named Benjamin, all helpfulness. “I wouldn’t mind giving you two a demonstration.”

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/21/the-clash-paul-simonon-gauche-biker-art-betrayal-punk

bit harsh and borderline personal

Totally Mexico! How the Nathan Barley nightmare came true

Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris’s 2005 TV series was a comedy about a ludicrous ‘self-facilitating media node’ in east London. But 10 years on, it looks more like a documentary about the future

But that's actually a really good piece?

yeah, strapline actually gets the article completely wrong

it's an absolutely shit piece and it fits the strapline. hipsters this hipsters that. it says "haircuts" how many times? gimme 1000 dayglo hipsters over brooker and co encouraging anyone who reads the guardian to stand up and applaud themselves every fucking day for liking 6music and jarvis cocker, and decade old tv shows. honestly - the guardian on culture is like your granddad plus 970 words and minus a sense of humour.

Yes - far too self-congratulatory a piece. ...2005 was already well into Shoreditch/Hoxton era and NB was was actually quite bland and only occasionally hitting the target.

Or the pub that had been bought out by club promoters, but “to confuse people” they’d kept the downstairs bar unaltered and given all the regulars membership. “All the normal people had been turned into these weird props.”

this is so fucking absurd - so they should have just booted out the regulars cos to keep allowing them in was voyeurism by default? you can't win with the "o they're at it again" morons in the guardian. heaven forbid a few people in a big city did some silly things in the name of art - let's all fucking throw a wooly jumper at them and listen to "sorted for es and whizz".

strapline actually gets the article completely wrong

ehh well there's a v long section in the middle abt how it predicted this and that using examples that are cherrypicked to the point of daftness. calling happyslapping a post-Nathan Barley phenomenon... come on now

http://www.theguardian.com/profile/the-guide

was looking for an online copy of the exhibition listings that appears in the guide on saturdays, got the above, which is just an archive of the populist listicles. pah.

Omar El-Hussein, the 22-year-old Danish man shot dead by police after supposedly carrying out the worst attack on Danish soil for decades, was a petty criminal with a past seemingly full of contradictions. He was a smart student but reportedly had a short fuse and was prone to violence. He was a talented kick-boxer and yet appeared to have suffered from anxiety and used cannabis.

he liked to drink coca cola yet sometimes appeared to have purchased lemonade

"and yet appeared to have used cannabis" ffs

Smart but violent? This is unprecedented!

"No one who speaks German could be an evil man."

http://i.imgur.com/HpmOJ57.png

didn't google glass already bomb a few months ago?