It's complicated. A lot of pop groups aren't actually pop. Westlife haven't released one pop record - lots of saccharine ballads that hark back to the pre-rock era of pop, yes, but still not pop.

Take That had one moment of pop greatness - Back For Good - and the rest was bland sub-dance muzak. Bros were the last 'pop' pop group.

Christina Aguilera isn't really pop because she went for the authentic vote (and funny how only pop people can be known by just their Christian name - Donny, Britney, Kylie - while rock people are known by their "tougher" surname: Jagger, Dylan, Hendrix).

Pop doesn't give a fig for authenticity or adherence to notions of muscularity or rootsy maturity.   more »

n an interview last Friday, President Bush dismissed rumours of a US-planned attack on Iran as "baseless gossip" and "empty propaganda".

Two days later, his top military commander, General David Petraeus, publicly accused Iran's ambassador to Iraq of being a member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, which the administration is considering labelling a terrorist organisation.

Gen Petraeus also announced to reporters the arrest of three Iranian agents it contends are engaged in Iraq weapons-smuggling operations.

In the Friday interview, Bush went on to say, "I understand the images of my country have been distorted and I understand people say things about me personally that simply aren't true ... my country is a country of peace."   more »

TV News doesn't need TV anymore, and the definition of news is now in the hands of consumers, not an elite group of journalistic royalty.

Some of it these days is actually being created by amateurs, and that's only going to increase. Why?

Because postmodernism views much of the fruit of modernism as failed and challenges its basic assumptions (grand narratives) of ordered hierarchy, elitism, and the lordship of science.

The Web, while authored by science, is the tool of curiosity and imagination, and structurally put people in a countercultural driver's seat, because it can — through exploring links — deconstruct any assumption presented to them by the culture's elite, and that includes all institutions of power.

This is power in the hands of the masses never dreamed of before, and where it's going is scary as hell to a society of order.   more »

Record-low interest rates in 2001, 2002 and 2003 did not lead Americans to invest more - there was already excess capacity.

Instead, easy money stimulated the economy by inducing households to refinance their mortgages, and to spend some of their capital.

It is one thing to borrow to make an investment, which strengthens balance sheets; it is another thing to borrow to finance a vacation or a consumption binge.

But this is what Alan Greenspan encouraged Americans to do. When normal mortgages did not prime the pump enough, he encouraged them to take out variable-rate mortgages - at a time when interest rates had nowhere to go but up.

Predatory lenders went further, offering negative amortisation loans, so the amount owed went up year after year.   more »

When the Soviet Union collapsed a few years later, misguided visions of omnipotence resurfaced. Conservative triumphalists dreamed of primacy and sought to lock in long-term unipolarity.

Iraq was a strategic experiment designed to begin the Second American Century. That experiment and US foreign policy now lie in ruins.

For the US power elite, being on top of the world has been a habit for 60 years. Hegemony has been a way of life; empire, a state of being and of mind.

The institutional realist critics of the Bush administration have no alternative conceptual framework for international relations, based on something other than force, the balance of power or strategic predominance.   more »