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A Depressing Denouement

I find it very depressing that the only thing everybody is talking about when it comes to yesterday's Euro 2020 final is, as always, racism.

Millions of people all over the world watched and enjoyed the match. It was tough, tense and exciting. Somebody has to win, somebody has to lose. It's always painful to be on the losing side, particularly at the end of a very closely fought contest. Deciding tournament finals by penalty kicks seems particularly egregious. I am not sure why the football authorities decided on this remedy. Why can't competitors go on playing until there is a clear winner? It's what happens in other sports--baseball and tennis immediately spring to mind.

Be that as it may, that's what the football authorities decreed. Yesterday's final, like many other finals, was decided by the dreaded penalty kicks. What happened is what always happens: The team with nerves of steel prevailed. England, as is often its wont, failed at the crucial penalty stage--and Italy won out. Still, Italy failed on penalty kicks in the 1994 World Cup Final, with its star player Roberto Baggio missing the crucial final kick. It happened also to Chelsea captain John Terry in the 2008 UEFA Champions League final. So, everybody has had his share of disappointments. That's the way it goes in sport. You accept it, and start planning for the next tournament.

But that's not the way England has taken it. National hysteria has today taken hold of the country, but a hysteria of a peculiar sort. What's happening in England now is repugnant. Politicians and media and Internet worthies are demanding that the nation undergo self-laceration over its racism. Why? Well, we are told that black England players--particularly the three who missed their kicks--have been subjected to racist abuse since last night.

That may well be true. I haven't looked on social media, and don't particularly want to. I try to avoid reading stupid abusive comments. However, stupid abusive comments are part-and-parcel of the Internet. People hide, and have always hidden, behind anonymity. It enables them to be as insulting, as nasty and as threatening as they like without facing any consequences. There is no reason to pay any attention to people too cowardly to use their own names when hurling insults at others.

The proper response to the racist abuse would have been to dismiss it as too pathetic and worthless to merit serious attention. Instead, through the intervention of Boris Johnson, Prince William and the rest of Britain's buffoonish Tory government, stupid comments made by stupid people (many probably children or teenagers), something idiotic has been elevated into a national and even international crisis. Instead of celebrating a great sporting contest and a fine England footballing performance (the best in more than 50 years), the country and the world is talking, once again, about racism.

Twitter, according to this story in "The Hill" has taken down 1000 racist tweets. 1000! Let's see. Tens of millions of people around the world watched the match. 1000 tweets is a statistically insignificant number. Yet the story, as far as the media and the politicians are concerned, is these 1000 tweets. Our media-political class is truly pathetic.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/562527-world-disgusted-by-racist-abuse-toward-players

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The Gaggle Music Club: Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain"

This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is "Night on Bald Mountain" by Modest Mussorgsky.

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839–1881), one of the most distinctive voices in 19th-century Russian music, was a member of the “Mighty Handful” that also included Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Alexander Borodin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The Five’s mission was to break from Western European models and forge an authentically Russian style, drawing on folk melody, native idioms and Orthodox liturgy. Mussorgsky was perhaps the least conventional of the group, and the one whose music most strongly resisted later academic tidying up. His rejection of Western compositional norms, favoring speech-like vocal lines, abrupt modulations and stark orchestral colors, made him seem unrefined to contemporaries, but visionary to later composers.

The piece that is now called "Night on Bald Mountain" was not a single, straightforward composition. The piece audiences are most familiar with is Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1886 orchestration ...

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TG 1948: Ukraine Cuts Off Hungary's Oil Supply; Trump Steps In

George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle discuss Ukraine's repeated attacks on the Druzhba oil pipeline that lead to cutoffs in Hungary's oil supply, and wonder what Kiev's motives may be in launching such attacks.

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TG 1947: NATO's Deceit Over The Ukraine "Security Guarantees"

George Szamuely discusses NATO's attempt to fool the world over the "robust security guarantees" that President Trump and Russia have supposedly signed on to.

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August 20, 2025

https://www.rt.com/news/623339-netanyahu-macron-france-antisemitism/

This guy is pure fucking evil!! If that is antisemitic, then I’m damn proud of it. Netanyahu is a poster child for antisemitism .

Why doesn’t Trump and idiot wife write a letter to this scumbag about the children of Gaza. History will not take kindly to the inaction of the US, Europe or Russia to stop Israel and this cretin

August 20, 2025

Obama's NATO Ambassador Admits to British Lords: Trump Just Ended 80 Years of Global Control

Promethean Updates

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Aug 20, 2025 The Midweek Update

Get our FREE newsletter at https://www.PrometheanAction.com — In this episode, Susan Kokinda from Promethean Action reveals crucial insights into the recent shift in US foreign and economic policy under President Donald Trump. Highlighting the testimony of Ivo Daalder, former NATO ambassador, before the British House of Lords, Kokinda discusses how Trump's administration is challenging the post-war rules-based order that has guided Western policies for decades. The video outlines Trump's success in resolving global conflicts, reestablishing national economic sovereignty, and dismantling the strategies of imperial global elites. Subscribe for a deeper understanding of these monumental developments and their global repercussions.

8 hours ago

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/abrego-garcia-released-from-jail-returned-maryland-await

THIS IS A JOKE!! So much for Trumps tough on illegal immigrants. This mother -fucker is released from jail, and is protected by a judges order not to be taken into ICE custody after release from Tenn. custody. This enrages me, he is in the US illegally and is protected by US judges from deportation.

And I have a relative who cannot get a US visa to visit, when they have a home, family and business in their country of origin, and I have provided my financial records to guarantee that they would not over stay their welcome. It makes me sick. I hope this scumbag gets deported to South Sudan.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

January 21, 2023
More Leftie Than Thou
"Jacobin" Magazine Celebrates A Strike Against Ol' Blue Eyes

Here at "The Gaggle" we have very little time for the "more Leftie than thou" school of thought--that's the approach to life according to which the only thing that matters is whether you take the right position on every issue under the sun from Abortion to Zelensky. No one in the world meets the exacting standards of this school of thought; any Leftie leader anywhere is always selling out to the bankers and the capitalists. The perfect exemplar of this is the unreadable Jacobin magazine. 

The other day I came across this article from 2021. It's a celebration of trade union power. And not simply trade union power, but the use of trade union power to secure political goals. Of course (and this is always the case with the "more Leftie than thou" crowd), this glorious, never-to-be-forgotten moment on the history of organized labor took place many years ago--in the summer of 1974 to be exact. Yes, almost half a century has gone by since that thrilling moment when the working-class movement of Australia mobilized and prepared to seize the means of production, distribution and exchange. 

Well, not quite. Organized labor went into action against...Ol' Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board, the Voice; yes, Frank Sinatra. Why? What had Sinatra done? Sinatra was certainly very rich, and he owned a variety of properties and businesses. But if the Australian trade union movement were, understandably, searching for the bright, incandescent spark that would finally awaken the working class from its slumber there were surely richer, greedier, more dishonest, more decadent, above all more Australian individuals it could have discovered. Australia was never short of them. Rupert Murdoch immediately springs to mind. Why Sinatra?

 

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