Motley Moose – Archive

Has anyone else heard of Mondegreens? I knew what they were, just didn’t know there was a word for them, and have just discovered this in James’ Gleick’s excellent new book ‘The Information’.

They’re when you mishear a lyric like:

“When a Man loves a Walnut”

or

“He’s Got the Whole World in his Pants”

On a Bkos thread tonight I mentioned this, and people came up with some brilliant examples, including the video below, linked by Anathema, which is an entire song subtitled in Mondegreens

Enjoy, more examples below the thread.  

While I have made quite clear my passionate support for the democratic revolutions throughout the Arab World, and my firm belief that UN Security Council Resolution is vital to protect the people of Libya from a ruthless armed dictator, let me just be clear that I will not support any Neo-Con takeover of the international mission.

There are already signs of this happening in the UK; with the military Chiefs at odds with the Prime Minister on the UN mandate over targeted assassinations and regime change. Add to this the optics of Tomahawk missiles and Pentagon briefings, and we have uncanny and worrisome echoes of the Iraq War, which finally – almost fatally –  hi-jacked UN principles of humanitarian intervention for Neo-colonialist Neo-conservative ends. The abiding message of the multinational force assembled  should be….

To allow the Libyan people their rights of self determination.

It’s a fair point. As the sound of anti-craft fire combined with the distant crumps of explosions disturb the Libyan night, it’s a fair point: are we celebrating death? Are we cheering on exactly the same kind of indiscriminate slaughter which was unleashed in Vietnam and Cambodia, and more recently in Iraq? Democracy, founded on debate and dissent, should never try to silence those questions. It should ask them. Ask them of ourselves, and those in Government, or the Armed Forces, who seek to represent and defend us.

But for once, this isn’t about us. The uprisings in the Maghreb and Mashriq, the revolutions in the Arab World from Morocco to Yemen, Tunisia to Syria, have not been led by us. It’s a spring awakening, as important as 1968 or 1848.

One of the oldest cliches of political life is that we always end up fight the last war.  When it comes to the rare moment of the UN utilising its chapter VII provision last night and enforcing a No Fly Zone, with additional ultimatums for Gaddafi to withdraw his forces from the several heavily bombarded towns in Libya, it cannot be emphasised too much: this is not a ground invasion or regime change from above

Unlike Iraq, President Obama has insisted the US is providing support to the UN, but not proposing an invasion:

“I also want to be clear about what we not be do – the US is not going to deploy ground troops into Libya. And we are not going to use force beyond a defined goal, specifically: the protection of civilians in Libya.”

Though I understand the reservations about military action in any field, I felt a deep sense of relief when the UN Security Council voted through resolution 1973 last night UK time.

Why? Because in all the mess of the wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan, I always feared one of the casualties of those debacles would be the careful constructed Responsibility to Protect principle established after the genocide in Rwanda, and near genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo.

To me this isn’t about the right to wage war, but the responsibility to prevent it

Sadly, it now appears that early estimates of 80,000 dead as a result of Friday’s Earthquake and Tsunami may not be short of the mark.

This ‘Help Japan’ poster is available at the Signalnoise store, with all profits going to disaster relief.

Japanese death toll to far exceed 10,000

Tens of thousands believed to have died as result of tsunami and huge earthquake that triggered it.

For two years the Lithuanian government had banned the public display of Soviet and Nazi symbols, but suddenly lifted the ban on Swastikas last May. This Friday a large Neo Nazi demonstration marched through the streets of an EU capital with Government permission and police escorts.

Hundreds marched through the streets of Vilnius with  swastikas and SS insignia. Many people wore badges with swastikas sewed onto their clothing. Some were wearing white armbands with flames (that essentially resemble a swastika, a symbol that was also on some of the flags).

But this was no normal fringe Neo Nazi movement. Among the participants were Ricardas Cekutis, current head of PR at the state-sponsored Genocide Research Center – a government subsidised institution which tries to make an equivalence between the horrors of Stalinism and the horrors of the holocaust, seen here (on the right) with Mindaugas Murza, the infamous neo-Nazi. More astonishing still, MP Kazimieras Uoka, a member of parliament from the ruling Homeland Union faction was at the front of the March.

Something is going very wrong in Lithuania.

Quoted on CNN

“At this point, we know that one GPS station moved (8 feet), and we have seen a map from GSI (Geospatial Information Authority) in Japan showing the pattern of shift over a large area is consistent with about that much shift of the land mass,” said Kenneth Hudnut, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

The most stable regime in the Arab world topples under mass peaceable protests, and people like this

Vox populi: Vox Dei

The Voice of Freedom has spoken across Egypt today

This might be premature, but after the violence of the last 24 hours (reports of a thousand injured and a dozen dead) it seems: the army has taken the side of the people.