I really just think the AFL and NRL should stop trying to encroach on each other's territories already. It's only acceptable for new teams to be set up where there is an existing groundswell of support behind them. Really, ideally, we should get back to a more organic era of sport where teams were set up by local people who wanted to play and/or watch sport, not by corporations looking to expand their markets. But this is what we have in winter sports in Australia today: we have a Coke versus Pepsi corporate war, which I can't see will ever get anywhere much, nor should it. I personally prefer the Rugby League to Victorian Rules, but that doesn't mean I want Melburnians to abandon their proud traditions. I really don't want Victorian Rules to displace Rugby League anywhere either, for the same reason: a viable working class tradition, albeit one horribly transmogrified under commercial pressures that have introduced cheerleaders, sponsorships and mergers. Really, I'd like the government to step in and curb all this, but that requires the working class to take state power: ultimately that is the only way working class traditions can be prevented from melting into air, by the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Sorry to reach such a hyperbolic political conclusion so quickly from such a banal topic.

Guardian ordered to pay damages to Iraqi PM, appeals.

I was convinced yesterday by a special offer to eat at a branch of the misnamed Fine Burger Co. It was derisory, overpriced shit, which moreover I am regretting today because of its inconclusive interaction with my guts. The burger was miniscule, and the bun cold. Here is a newspaper review with a similar conclusion.

I really want to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, for two reasons. Firstly, that you get to participate in a terrorist atrocity in an airport, and secondly that it's apparently the best game ever, what Charlie Brooker has called 'The Citizen Kane of repeatedly shooting people in the face'. Unfortunately, my only gaming platform is my first generation MacBook, so I'll have to wait till I upgrade computers, and hope that by the time I do there'll be a mac powerful enough for this game.

O-bomber's Amerika is ratcheting up tensions in the north-west of South America, raising a serious possibility of a proxy war by Colombia on Venezuela.

The fucking Grauniad has been engaging in an orgy of triumphalism over the fall of the Berlin Wall for months. The Morning Star has a more balanced and sober assessment.

Murdoch's plan to charge for news is only going to work if he can get other media outlets to join him in a cartel to this end – there are few if any media markets that Murdoch dominates sufficiently that people won't simply turn to a free alternative for the content that Murdoch has should he start charging.

In the UK, there's so much competition Murdoch has no chance. In the USA, he might be more successful as leading competitors already have subscription-based services. In parts of Australia, basically everywhere outside of the two main cities, Murdoch's domination is so great that you might think he'd be in with a chance, but actually there are currently free online news sources that would stand to grow greatly in the vacuum left by Murdoch restricting access to his websites, so it might backfire.

This time of year

Three festivals in quick succession: Hallowe'en; Guy Fawkes' Night; Remembrance Sunday.

Hallowe'en (31st October)

Best thing you can say about it: pagan celebration (which, not coincidentally, is the main complaint made about it from certain religious quarters)

Worst thing you can say about it: the presence of this celebration on these shores is an example of creeping Americanisation and is driven primarily by commercial imperatives.

The second point is clearly correct and the first is pretty dubious, hence we must conclude that Hallowe'en is rubbish.

Guy Fawkes (5th November)

Best thing you can say about it: national celebration of the failure of a terrorist to damage our democratic institutions.

Worst thing you can say about it: vicious nationalist anti-Catholic monarchist jamboree.

While anti-Catholic overtones have diminished in 'mainland' Britain in recent years, anti-Catholicism remains the main historical logic for the celebrations. While it would be pretty naïve to suggest that Guy Fawkes was fighting for freedom of religion, rather than the supremacy of his own religion, he nevertheless was fighting against a regime that oppressed his co-religionists, something we should surely have no sympathy for in this day and age. Moreover, it's not the case he was looking to introduce a less democratic system. The Kind in parliament was hardly a modern constitutional democracy. The only reason to celebrate the failure of the plot is a preference for Protestant ascendency. This is a dire celebration and ought to be officially discouraged. Even if the actual sectarian overtones have disappeared in Great Britain, it remains overtly monarchist and nationalistic.

Remembrance Sunday (Sunday closest to 11th November) and Remembrance Day (11th November)

Best thing you can say about it: a solemn day of remembrance for the victims of pointless wars.

Worst thing you can say about it: imperialist death cult.

It's clear that the origins of this commemoration are precisely the latter not the former, pace what a certain commenter on this blog said recently: the point was to commemorate the 'glorious dead' who had died 'for King and Empire'. At what point could this have been said to have changed to an acknowledgement of the horrors of war? I can't see how it possibly can have been said to have changed in that way when this country is today engaged in the bloodiest imperialist war for decades, one every bit as unnecessary as the First World War which spawned this cult of death in the first place. The comemorations are martial in nature and emphasise continuity between our nation today and Empire, between those who fought then and those who fought now. I note this day is only commemorated by the victorious powers in the First World War, and only by some of those.

While I'm at it, I'd like to attack the visible manifestation of the imperialist death cult, the wearing of poppies. This, like bonfire night, is heavily politicised in Northern Ireland. These things aren't politicised in Britain, but that's because in Great Britain there is no vocal constituency opposed to British imperialism. The proceeds from the sales of poppies go to the Royal British Legion, a charity providing for the needs of British ex-servicemen. While of course ex-servicemen have needs that may need to be taken care of, multiple negative things need to be said here. One is that this is the government's job and shouldn't rely on public subscriptions. Another is that by doing this, the Royal British Legion, and hence the death cult that supports it, are integral elements of the British imperialist war machine.

I'm just looking at some Freud in German today – I think it's the first time I've ever done so. The depth of the translation problems with Freud astonishes me. There are certain well known mistranslations: Trieb rendered as 'instinct' (it should be 'drive'); Ich as 'ego' (should be 'me'); Es as 'id' ('it', though this one I don't mind too much, because 'id' sounds kind of like a blunted 'it'). But I didn't realise that 'pleasure' in English Freud is the translation of Lust – I had assumed that the German would be Vergnügen. Several possible English translations occur to me, most obviously 'desire', or even 'joy' (or even the cognate 'lust', but that would be mischievous) – correct translation makes Freud converge with Lacan.

This band, Old Mayor, are the best band that I know of in the UK right now:

God I hate New Zealand accents – they're the Brummies of the South Seas. Sorry, New Zealanders – although I think the only New Zealander who maybe reads this blog doesn't really have an NZ accent.

Addendum: OK, it occurs to me that this was a bit harsh, and that I ought to add the caveat that I like New Zealand accents in NZ. I spent like 5 days there and by the end found my own accent going a little NZish. Sure, there were communication difficulties, but it's their home turf, not mine, so I am more than happy for them. But outside NZ, I have no patience for it, sorry.

DON'T

Please, please, could you fuckers just STOP already? The economy is screwed. The whole logic of the 'stimulus' is that the fundamentals of the economy were fine and we just need to give it a kickstart. In reality, the economy was grotesquely unsustainable – all we've done with the bailout and stimulus is restarted its unsustainability at great cost to the public purse. Just stop and let's take the medicine – I'm with the monetarist libertarians on this one, although really what I want is a socialist revolution that will see us start producing for human need not the imperatives of the market.

Hey man, nice shots

Update: Hey guy, way to raise the bar! School shootings are last decade's news – no-one does a murderous rampage like the professionals.

Update 2: I'm very disappointed with the normally anti-imperialist Richard Seymour's pitiful take on events. Apparently it's racist to point out the ethnicity of the attacker – Palestinian, apparently. But this isn't racist at all – it's completely logical. While it was always possible that the attacker/s were 'just crazy', I also hoped they may be latter-day John Browns fighting imperialism in the belly of the beast. With a Palestinian attacker, these acts look more likely to be politically motivated, and more heroic.

Lévi-Strauss est mort - en fin, vraiment.

OMFG – FTW

Update: OK, it occurs to me I ought to make some kind of comment about this.

One of the most amazing aspects of this is Johnson's use of the word 'oiks'. 'Oik' is English public school slang for a lower class person - that is, someone not educated at a public school. It could be likened to the word 'chav', but is far broader, older and less current. It's not a word I ever remember using except ironically, but there certainly were a few at school who did use it. Still, it really belongs to a bygone and more classist era.

Johnson's use of this word I think puts a different complexion on his actions. Rather than sheer heroism, I think we can interpret his actions rather simply as indicative of a self-assured superiority, a birthright to go in and martial the lower orders.

George Monbiot on something really extraordinary: a resurgence of climate change denialism.

Monbiot presents statistics indicating that popular perceptions about climate change have shifted massively in the US since 2006 away from belief in the existence of man-made climate change.

The other evidence he produces is anecdotal, so he doesn't tell us anything worthwhile about the state of perceptions of climate change in the world.

Another core thing he points to is that the scientific consensus continues unabated. He produces less evidence here, so perhaps I ought not to believe him.

Still, this tallies with my necessarily statistically inadmissable personal experience: I have younger relatives who have lately become climate change deniers, but haven't heard the scientific community coming out with any newly adverse findings.

What do we make of this effect?

Monbiot's answer is to point to a psychological effect whereby people repress uncomfortable threats to their mortality. We could, and should, be more general about this though: there are any number of reasons why people would not psychologically like to believe in catastrophic man-made climate change.

I don't think that this can prima facie be an explanation: this would explain why people might deny climate change in the first place, and also why they might be receptive to fresh voices denying climate change, but doesn't explain a recent turn towards climate denial.

One thing that occurs to me about this is that it correlates with the collapse of the economy (which is ongoing though now cleverly papered over). The effect of the economic collapse was a massive reorienting of priorities away from minimising climate change, towards the entirely opposed aim of increasing economic output. This reprioritisation is particularly noticeable in the media, which was previously acting as a conduit for the message about climate change, but has of late been more preoccupied with the economy.

Still, I don't think this is enough either: this may cause people to forget about climate change, but can't lead to such a huge increase in denialism.

Now the cause is in Monbiot's piece, but I think it's not given due prominence. Monbiot starts by saying "Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease." This is absolutely right: climate change denialism qua belief-set is preying on the psychological and economic conditions to spread and reproduce itself, infecting more and more people. The means of transmission are equally clear. Climate change denialism is largely, rightly shut out of the broadcast media, but there are two places where its spread is totally uncontrolled: the internet and books. As Monbiot notes, "A study by the website Desmogblog shows that the number of internet pages proposing that man-made global warming is a hoax or a lie more than doubled last year. . . On Amazon.co.uk, books championing climate change denial are currently ranked at 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 and 8 in the global warming category." Monbiot I think takes this as one symptom of what he's talking about, whereas I think this profusion is the very disease, a spiralling combination of cause and effect.

This is what causes me almost daily worry atm: there is simply no check on dangerous empirically false ideas spreading in the information age. My aforementioned younger relatives' belief systems are a complex web of false beliefs, backed with ignorance and fallacious reasoning, and I think have been spread to them via the internet, and books recommended on and ordered over the internet.

There is simply no guarantee that the internet will produce a 'marketplace of ideas' in which good ideas will win out. No such 'marketplace' has ever existed. Which ideas win out is determined by a complex range of factors, of which truth is at best only one.

As someone who has spent a lifetime searching for truth – and faith, which as Alain Badiou tells us, is inseparable from truth – this is nothing short of utterly disturbing, even if all it really should do is reassure us that Hegelian idealism is wrong, and that material forces are the motor of history, and ideas. A full, materialist analysis of this burgeoning ideology remains to be done, however; or at least, I have yet to see it.

I'm starting to like Brian Leiter.

I find Men At Work's 'Land Down Under' moves more than almost any song ever written. I mention this because I imagine people will find this fact genuinely amusing. I think this started when I was having coffee with an Australian friend in an empty restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan last year and it came on. I now find it evokes Australia better than any other piece of music for me – like, I find it genuinely haunting, much more so than either Advance Australia Fair or Waltzing Matilda (the former of which actually used to it for me, weirdly, and the latter of which I still think, like all right-thinking people, should be Australia's national anthem). I think it genuinely evokes the essence of the Australian nation, as a bunch of morally bankrupt bogans clinging to the side of a profoundly inhospitable (to them) landmass.