How Hydroelectric Power Kills Insects, and Why That Matters Pacific Standard (Chuck L)
Researchers discover real reason why turtles have shells PhysOrg (Chuck L)
Biotrap is the world’s first 100% biodegradable mosquito trap Inhabitat (David L)
Two Flavors of Record Heat: Deadhorse and Houston Wunderground
Mission: Save the Environment Project Syndicate (David L)
Turkey
Main points in @RT_Erdogan’s speech at Istanbul airport amid #TurkeyCoupAttempt: pic.twitter.com/SDzwFve0U3 @XHNews
Erdogan returns; Turkish coup appears to crumble as president’s supporters take to streets yhoo.it/29JHTgK pic.twitter.com/1cw2GIYJCi @Yahoonews
The Night Erdogan Almost Lost Turkey Foreign Policy
Turkey In Chaos After Coup Attempt Erupts In Violence Huffington Post
AP EXPLAINS: The cleric being blamed for Turkey coup attempt Associated Press
Turkey holds crucial place on oil routes Financial Times
Turkey Analysis: Erdogan, the Military, and a Bleak Future for the People EA WorldView (resilc)
Army generals are attempting to topple Erdogan — but whoever comes out on top, Turkish democracy is sure to lose Foreign Policy
Nice
French president to hold crisis talks BBC
How a Tunisian Immigrant Staged the Attack in Nice Wall Street Journal
Isis claims credit for Nice massacre Financial Times. Seems late to be credible.
Brexit
Britain to get absolutely everything it wants from Brexit negotiations Daily Mash
Special report’Brexit means Brexit’ says May, but what does Brexit actually mean? Telegraph
After Brexit: the myth of post‑truth politics Spiked (ChrisG)
China
China Growth Sends Troubling Signal on Reform Wall Street Journal
South China Sea: Building up trouble Financial Times
Earth’s 5th Costliest Non-U.S. Weather Disaster on Record: China’s $22 Billion Flood Wunderground
Fears grow over Scottish firms used for money-laundering in former Soviet Union Herald Scotland
No Case Against Suspended President of Brazil But Rousseff May Still be Impeached Real News
Chilcot Report
A Grand and Disastrous Deceit London Review of Books (resilc)
Syraqistan
Israeli government ‘lawfare contractor’ sues Facebook for $1b. +972 (guurst)
Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since 2002 Intercept (resilc)
Trade Traitors
How the TTIP Could Make Ethical Meat Harder to Find Defend Democracy
2016
Bernie Sanders to Speak at Democratic Convention NBC (furzy)
Hmmm. Do you think NBC is trying to get a specific result?
nbcpoll.com/nbc-poll-who-a…
“Who are you supporting” pic.twitter.com/dHjluH1rvJ @JC_Christian. OMG, you must click through. I have never seen such a blatant distortion in a major poll. I’ve done survey research and even innocuous-seeming changes will move results by 10 points. This was hamhanded and deliberate. No wonder this poll was an outlier compared to other recent ones.Election Update: 10 Questions About Where The 2016 Race Stands FiveThirtyEight (resilc)
Matt Bruenig added some ace annotations to @voxdotcom’s interview with @HillaryClinton: genius.com/10091203 pic.twitter.com/Gk0TPQaAXC @NewsGenius. Brutal takedown
Admiral Fabuloso: Hillary, Syria and the Destructive Career of James G. Stavridis Andrew Cockburn, Counterpunch
Hillary Clinton Opens Up in Effort to Win Voter Trust Wall Street Journal. Yet another reintroduction.
Not so fast: Defeated anti-Trump delegates vow trouble during the convention Washington Post (furzy)
Winners and Losers from Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick – Washington Post (furzy). Not sure I buy this. VP is a terrible job. Christie could wind up being DoJ if Trump were to win.
They could have picked… London Review of Books (resilc). In case you forgot why Trump won…
Trump Foreign Policy Advisor: ‘Americans Are Fed Up With the Bullshit‘Der Spiegel (resilc)
U.S. prosecutors launch review of failed FedEx drug case Reuters (EM). Funny, I not only read about the case but skimmed the complaint. I was very annoyed that the DoJ was spending resources on this while not going after bank-related frauds (people getting meds from online pharmacies; I know there’s a health risk here, but I also know people who are sick and low on funds, like HIV positive people who need Zithromax, and can’t afford to go to the MD to get the meds the proper way. So some of the existence of this business is the direct result of our outrageously overpriced medical system). So when I read the angry and specific retort by the Fedex counsel, that they had cooperated extensively with the DoJ and regarded the prosecution as unwarranted, my gut was they might have a point, but then I discounted my reaction as confirmation bias.
On The Passing of David Margolis, the DOJ Institution emptywheel (Chuck L)
Government Transparency: Gov. Malloy Appointee Accused Of Violating Law In Cigna-Anthem Merger Review
David Sirota, International Business Times
Energy companies spend big to fight Colorado ballot initiatives Reuters (EM)
Walter Hang Interview on Binghamton Now – 7/14/2016 ToxicsTargeting. John C:
Walter is one of the leaders of the groups that forced Gov. Cuomo in NY to sign the moratorium on fracking. Here he is being interviewed by a local Binghamton, NY radio station on water pollution and the Dominion pipeline proposal through NY State. Ithaca, in the heart of the Finger Lakes region of NY is having serious water problems. Astounding to me since the Ithaca/Elmira area was famous for some of the cleanest water systems in the entire country (I grew up in both towns and lived in the area on and off until a few years ago)
This is Walter’s group, http://www.toxicstargeting.com/ an excellent grassroots organization doing good work.
I know all these areas well talked about in the interview, heartbreaking.
Black Injustice Tipping Point
FBI Greenlights Crackdown on Black Lives Matter Protesters Truthout
Get Home Safely: 10 Rules of Survival PBS (Kevin C). Advice to blacks on how to behave if stopped by police. The fact that articles like this exist (and yes, I know advice like this is longstanding) says so much about what is wrong with America.
Law professor’s response to BLM shirt complaint. Imgur (Judy B). Saw this only now. A great piece. Wish I had even remotely as much patience as the law professor has.
Industrial Production Jumps 0.6%; Has Manufacturing Turned? Michael Shedlock
Guillotine Watch
India ‘gold man’ battered to death BBC. A real world analogue to the myth of the death of Crassus.
‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli fraud trial set for June 2017 Reuters
Class Warfare
Why you should be nice to your robots Guardian (Dr. Kevin). Skynet is coming.
Antidote du jour:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
160 comments
Comments are closed.
The link to Matt Bruenig added some ace annotations to @voxdotcom’s interview with @HillaryClinton is malformed.
Should be http://genius.com/10091203 and http://pic.twitter.com/Gk0TPQaAXC.
Re: Matt Bruenig, Hillary, and the Children’s Defense Fund, and Matthew 25:45
The true history of Hillary Clinton’s (dis)service to Funding the Defense of Children demands frequent retelling, but for me the actions that damn her on Judgement Day were the way she dismantled democracy and suppressed the already-dismal minimum wage for the least of my brothers and sisters in Haiti. No need for a link. Just Google Hillary Haiti and search for any cause for forgiveness in the top 100 links.
They say that Trump is a bully, and he is, but how sociopathic must one be to so sadistically torture Haiti?
The Children of Libya are quite dead too.
Whoops! Comment sent to moderation for using the words sad**tic and ch***ren in the same post. If only we could send Hillary to moderation.
She’s got moderators. But she won’t listen to them:
“Literal minded” — that’s what a three-year legal education does to you. You end up with a pointy head.
If Hillary’d only majored in English lit instead of poli sci at Wellesley, she coulda been a contendah …
Well, I’ve argued before that Clinton is one of those people who can perform any function within fixed parameters (like school assignments0 but hasn’t got a creative or imaginative bone in her body. In some ways she’s like an Idiot Savant version of Dubya. She can pass all the tests with flying colors (while he was a C student) but they both have plodding, concrete, incurious minds. Curiosity, creativity, and insight have not been common among our Chief Executives, and the well seems to have completely run dry with Clinton. Trump isn’t much better, although he can at least generate weird and at times interesting patter, although it’s obvious that it’s all for immediate consumption and he could say exactly the opposite (and believe it) tomorrow if the mood struck him or he sensed he’d get the desired results by saying it.
Please stop labeling conservatives in this manner: “hasn’t got a creative or imaginative bone in her body.”
I’m positive it is not true, see the eMail excuses, and the infinite ways in which they enrich themselves.
Clinton has a solid foundation for her creativity.
Well, I’d counter by saying that her excuses are lame, the grifting is Bill’s idea, and if you can point out one example of Clinton thinking outside the Washington Consensus I’d be surprised.
Actually, she did not pass all the tests. She failed the Washington, DC bar exam.
And the Clintonite response to that will be Marian Wright Edelman’s support of Clinton during the primary.
One should not miss the actual interview. A lot of words saying nothing of substance to give the impression of being thoughtful, concerned and directed without really naming the direction. Oh and a lot of misdirection regarding policies enacted by Clinton blaming the bad results on the implementation after 2001.
Ezra Friedman, er, Klein, did his job well, then.
Can anyone translate? From the Ezra Klein article that Matt Bruenig posts his comments on.
Hillary Clinton:
she thinks she and bill made 150 million bucks putting on dog and pony shows for the bankers, but she doesn’t want to commit to that. or something.
Emphasis on ‘or something’
I read it through multiple times. It’s meaningless bullsh*t.
Wow…
I have put forth ways of paying for all the investments that I make…
I think it’s important that we look for ways to pay for our investments…
But I’m not going to commit myself to that…
As far as I can see there is only one way to translate that, but I’ll need to re-read Frankfurt’s “On Bullshit” to be sure before I “commit myself”.
A side question: Is she also saying that Govt needs to make a profit on any investment it makes?
It would appear that yes, government is in the business of making a profit. Providing service to citizens appears to be a secondary consideration.
But then, I have a visceral knee jerk reaction any time someone uses the word entitlements to describe social service.
What’s the point of public goods if plutocrats can’t monetize them, after all?
Is Sarah Palin writing her speeches?
If only we were so fortunate!
She’s laying the ground work to defend going for the Grand Bargain?
Seems this could seem to mean just about anything she will want to do if elected.
As someone said recently, trying to pin down what she means is like trying to pin down mercury.
Wow, that Clinton statement… I thought Trump was the one who spoke at a Fourth Grade level? Of course, Clinton was talking to Ezra.
I like the double “because” move in the last paragraph. Also “we’re” and “we’ve.” And apparently the voters are supposed to select Clinton so that she can, at some point in the future, “figure out what we’re going to do.” So she doesn’t know? Goldman was writing fat checks to somebody who did not know “what we’re going to do”?
Oh come on Lambert, you know better: “we’re going to get more checks from Goldman for doin whatever the f they want, but we do know we can’t say that!”
Sounds like she’s excited about killing Social Security. You know, investments and all that.
thank you – I was trying to get to that myself.
Re: fracking—I’m guessing Jill Stein would be the only candidate against this. Not Hill, Donald, nor Gary Johnson. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Clinton will equivocate wildly but you can expect only the most tepid and partial resistance on fracking from her (the classic Democratic shoulder-shrugging “well, I tried”). Trump is all for it. Libertarians are all for anything that makes money and despoils the planet. Some of the greatest damage from a Trump presidency will undoubtedly be wrecking crew (see Thomas Frank) style non-enforcement of regulations, even if statutory protections exist. The Donald hates regulations.
since Stein is celebrity packin her cabinet she could tap T. Boone Pickens to head Energy. Lawd knows he needs to parlay those windmills and water hoarding.
Love that Penguin Huddle — brought out the paternal instincts in me.
+1. Penguin kindergarten roundup?
From “Law professor’s response…”
“Black Lives Matter is about focus, not exclusion.”
Yes!
I think most people recognize that. I also think that some of the people feel that some of the focus is on the AA portion of the equation rather than on the deadly force being utilized when it shouldn’t be part.
I don’t fault the AA community about wanting to do something about a very real problem for their community(anymore than they should fault others for pointing out that AAs are not the only group that has to worry about excessive police force.) I do however, think that it’s wrong and a disservice to those who died at the hands of police who weren’t black to act as if this is just an AA problem.
Again, not faulting them for taking action because I truly hate that so many potential lives have been cut short because police acted excessively and then walked away from the situation as if they didn’t. Things like what happened to Tamir Rice are completely wrong(and were completely wrong when it happened to a Hispanic kid in California as well.)
I wish I thought most people understand “Black Lives Matter” is about focus rather than exclusion. The response has made me believe most people see an “only” prefixed to it. That’s not the way I interpreted it, but apparently most people did, else the “All Lives Matter,” which implicitly ignores the problems that led to “Black Lives Matter,” would not have had the success it does. “Blue Lives Matter” seems to have that “only” in front.
This was one of my favorite reads today. The law school educator schools a student.
Sneaking in an unintended “only” as if it was implied is an extremely common propaganda ploy; not just straw man, but an outright lie. I wish he’d spend more time on it.
Bernie May Be Headed To Florida To Campaign For Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s Opponent Tim Canova
File under Karma is a B…
The rigging, I believe, is institutional, and not just one person.
Hope it’s not personal…just as endorsing her hero (the difference in response is sharp here) was not personal.
DWS has been totally shameless. Not sure even many among the hacks would be willing to be as brazen as she has been. I know Lambert resists have politicians compared to sex workers, since they perform a valuable service, but if most hacks are prostitutes, DWS is a street whore.
Trouble for the Bridgegate State’s Oaf of Office:
That Samson’s strong-arming of United to retain a money-losing route to his South Carolina vacation house occurred without Christie’s knowledge is at least conceivable — the Port Authority of NY & NJ has been a free wheel for nigh on a century.
But the notion of a Christie junior lieutenant taking it upon himself to blockade the GW Bridge at Fort Lee without the guv’s knowledge is very far-fetched.
As a former federal prosecutor, Christie has enjoyed the same “professional courtesy” as Broom Hilda Clinton. We don’t indict our own, as it were. But with a canary singing to the inquisitors, Christie may yet face the same harsh justice that inconsequential little people do.
Anyhow, the Bridgegate State still has a contendah … the Second Coming of 0bama, Cory Booger! :-)
Meanwhile, somewhere in Richistan …
United’s former CEO got $36.8 million after resigning because of federal probe [CNN]
The best way to rob a bank is to own one.
The best way to rob a corporation is to be a CEO forced out in a corruption probe.
Now, now
I’m sure he was incredibly deserving! After all, we all know that capitalism is a merit based system and if you don’t earn enough it’s because you didn’t work hard enough.
Oh, yeah! Trump’s AG in a NY minute! The Crapified States of Armageddon. Whadda ride! Whooda node! Whaddamidoinhere? Please, Mr. Custer…
muslims consider it their religious duty to have the maximum number of children possible and out populate the other religions, those that they could not wipe out militarily early in their history.
This bringing into this world of babies for political purposes is the real seed of their violent frustration that they vent on to soft targets.
Yeah, Catholics do that too, don’t they? /sarc
Thanks for remaining childless.
He musta missed the Osmonds, too.
or the Duggars.
I’m pretty sure that the Bible tells Christians to be fruitful and multiply. So it’s definitely not just a “muslim thing.”
christians and muslims are basically the same religion, born off judaism and its monotheistic psychotic war with nature,
The stark colonial logic of cancer is somehow unimpeachable when an imaginary friend vends it. Odd, innit.
Islam forked from proto-Judaism rather earlier than Christianity, the latter which could be said to have never really diverged much at all, and Islam therefore got less of the
sciomacrema of the Pharisaic dispensation on it.Buddhism is about suffering being born into life, and at the same time, with the belief souls need to be reborn to pay off earlier karma.
One central mystery of that belief is this, if a person is so evil, that he/she destroys the entire cosmos, such that no reincarnation is possible, how is he/she himself/herself going to pay that sin off in the next life, when next life is impossible anymore?
Is that (most evil) person then the kindest – by that very act – according to the Buddhists, because he/she helps everyone leave the cycle of birth and death (not possible anymore), which, by definition, is Nirvana?
And because we don’t advocate the destruction of the cosmos, are we not left with the only conclusion that the belief about karma and reincarnation invalid, based on the ethical imperative that we don’t destroy the cosmos?
If there is a cosmos, then there is death. There is no death. So once there is no death, there is no karma. Everything just is.
Words are a poor means to describe this paradox.
M K T P B: I think that you are being a tad too mahayana today. There is no requirement in Buddhism of believing in either karma or reincarnation. The only requirements would be an understanding that we are impermanent, composite beings, that the Dharma calls us to have compassion for all sentient beings (even fungi, honorary plants, as Lambert has written), and that we follow the strong suggestions of finding right intention, right livelihood, and a “right” attitude of ahimsa.
Reincarnation is all ego: Ego will wreck the cosmos.
Well. Ego doesn’t have to wreck the cosmos.
But it could if it doesn’t get its s**t together.
Hehe!
Must not post obvious Monty Python references…
“Let the heathens spill theirs on the dusty ground,
God will make them pay for each sperm that can be found. “
And Orthodox Jews.
That sounds awfully unlikely. Care to share with us where you’re getting your information?
No one seems to notice that Islam has been engaged in a rather bloody civil war for 35 years and their holiest site is being thoroughly crapified by infidel money.
As I keep trying to point out, the essential logical flaw of monotheism is that an absolute is not an ideal. We would rise from an absolute, while we would fall from an ideal. Theology is the original platonic idealism. That there is some essential quality or form and the world is just a flawed copy of it. One would have though 2500 years of philosophy would have shot enormous holes in that conceit by now, but instead they nitpick over things like free will and the meanings of words.
Yes, everything is connected, but that is as a network, not as a node. You can’t objectify the entirety of reality. You can add things together and get larger wholes, but then there is always infinity to deal with.
Occasionally I try taking some of these ideas to philosophy sites, but they really are pathetic.
Meanwhile Islam has spent 1400 years arguing whether religious authority is hereditary (Shiite), or institutional(Sunni), but if you keep your mind bundled up in the Koran, at least you go to heaven.
We really are just deranged apes.
Um, I believe your 35 year estimate is a little low. The Sunni-Shia schism (a bloody schism) was about 1400 years ago.
That “infidel” money is being spend by the Saudi’s. As far as I know they are faithful Muslims – I seem to remember some about of “charitable giving” required of Muslims, but my recollection of that is a little cloudy.
I’m sure the Swiss bankers who take their money are truly needy, and meet all the requirement of their religion for charitable giving.
2500 years of philosophy has been applied to justifying inequities and reifying the conceits of philosopher-kings, who are just “wise” enough to avoid causing their exalted positions to vanish in a puff of logic, as Douglas Adams (pbuh) put it. Philosophy is an instrumentality, not an agent. It goes where the landed gentry push it.
Hillary Clinton Opens Up in Effort to Win Voter Trust
New and improved Soapflakes! We wont leave big caustic burns this time, Promise! ;o)
I’m sorry
For the things that I have done to you
I’m gonna try to make it up to you
Won’t you give me one more chance
Won’t you give me one more chance
If this time should be anything like the other times
This time will be the last time
— Waylon Jennings
lucy opens up in effort to win charlie brown’s trust! stay tuned!
the Ivory ‘snowed’ girl……..
Hillary offers to withdraw from race; leaves huge wooden horse behind as “gift to my beloved people.”
Ah, so they stopped with the weekly “reinvent” Hillary to go with the “secret” Hillary. I suspect we will be reinventing Hillary by Thursday.
I wonder if her campaign will ever figure out that thier best course of action is to muzzle their candidate and stick her in a giant sack labeled “Not Trump”.
morning mailbag from oz
https://www.youtube.com/embed/dsYfn8yg41w?autoplay=1&rel=0
Aussie Commentates On Mexican Weather Reporting
Thanks for that. Cleared my troubled mind :-)
Does anyone believe that this “coup” in Turkey was real? The Turkish military cannot be this incompetent. You take out the head first or you don’t do anything else.
I’ve seen conspiracy theorist types suggest the fact that the “coup” happened the same day as the release (finally) of the 28 Pages was more than mere coincidence, and that the Saudis may have had a role in creating a distraction. A sad state of affairs when this almost seems plausible.
hadn’t refreshed pg an missed your comment before posting mine below…a few of those conspiracy theorist might’ve been spies…their survival relies on the ‘what if’s’. possibly retired spooks thought process might tend a wee bit more ‘spooky’…
Coups are untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that’s what’s going to happen here.
Yes when I saw it I thought it seemed a bit odd and now that I have read the read the FT article it seems even more so. The coup was planned by a very small number of high ranking officers and only 1500 soldiers.
Since their isn’t enough info yet I’m just speculating, but I get the distinct feeling that a small group of dissatisfied officers were goaded into something they would never have done otherwise. Due to the small numbers, I would guess a high ranking and powerful general (with erodgans support and knowledge) sought out this group and said he would throw his vast military resources behind them and ensure the success of the coup, then the small dissatisfied group proceeded and found the promised forces and support never came and were quickly sown up by the same general and other forces.
Erodgan takes a vacation just in case the coup attempt he instigated gets lucky, and now that it’s over, he has killed 2birds with one stone. He just removed a group of bothersome officers and more importantly he now has the public and international sentiment behind him to implement a full dictatorship to “save and secure” Turkey. If we never again hear from these officers that will be a good indicator
Just my feelings as of current info.
maybe it was all just a big Pokemon Go misunderstanding !
Haha except people died and more will, and “freedom” will get narrower still and the strongman still more oppressive and more deeply embedded.
Not that it matters here, a million miles away, where a little joke has no consequences…
People can be stupid everywhere….. seems that this Pokemon Go phenomena is resulting in at least some ‘players’ injuring themselves, or engaging in possible illegal acts while trying to find the ‘prize’…… “sigh”
…does it reach the level of acts of war…?? …….of course not …… but then again, war is stupidity on a grand scale !
p.s….. a little levity is needed to help keep one’s ( mine and perhaps others ) sanity, in these increasing weird & challenging times….events seem to be coming on faster and faster…..
What’s odd is that no spokesperson during the coup immediately stepped forward and took control of the media narrative. Good lord, even Baghdad Bob understood the importance of trying to control the media message.
So that’s a huge red flag on this whole thing.
Yes the whole thing seems like a complete clusterfack, Ill planned and carried out. While there is certainly massive amounts of incompetence in the world and this could have just been a poorly planned or implemented attempt, everything about it seems to work in erodgans favor and we know he is no stranger to intrigue (a la the Syrian sarin gas false flags hersh wrote about in lrb).
While I’m always cautious to assign much intelligence to the reactive and shortsighted elites, this whole thing just smells like it was guided along too much. It somewhat reminds me of the “terrorist” attacks the FBI plans and then stops here in the US, just a coup that they let go a little further for effect.
Maybe Erdogan got the idea from Egypt. Topple a very old dictator who is well past his use-by date, and use the resulting liberation to surface and expose your enemies (the Moslem Brotherhood). Then re-impose a dictatorship under a new, youthful dictator and slaughter or imprison those enemies – who are now standing exposed and helpless.
Erdogan also just removed a thousand or so judicial officers and judges. Odd that they are not linked to the coup.
In the past year he has closed the independent press and jailed their journalists plus those pesky judicial investigators that were interested in why the Intelligence Service set up by Erdy was transporting weapons and munitions to ISIS in the Aleppo province. He has compulsorily acquired the independent publication businesses jailed hundreds of teachers that advocated secular education.
That is why the EU wants Turkey inside and Erdy is the man who really does have weapons of mass destruction. Shall we call him Sadam Erdogan?
Well-informed opinion on your question:
https://twitter.com/chaseawinter/status/754227550273036288
If, as reported, some of the military units were told they were on a training mission, this would support a false flag interpretation. It’s not like things like this haven’t happened before, e.g. Gladio & Levon.
Erdogan is not shy in taking risks to consolidate his power — shutting down opposition news sources is an example.
Such disinformation could have just as plausibly come from the coup plotters (i.e., the soldiers would not have participated had they know the truth)
Precisely. But who were the coup plotters?
What I meant was that the fact that the soldiers were misled is as supportive of the real coup theory as it is of the false flag theory and therefore doesn’t tell you anything
And very unlikely in Hangout-istan that “the truth” will ever become clear…
Probably true…not that my wandering mind does not overly tap its 2 million sunsets of dna from ithaki to illium to today…
to often looking for shadows when it’s raining outside…
but a search with simply
“gulen clinton”
seems to show some concerted efforts two days ago via some judicial watch clinton email hairball stuff to show the history of gulen and $hillary and then seems to lead back to huma, and her brother and mother and various ties to organizations tied to parts of the muslim brotherhood…
there is always stuff happening on the web…but probabilities should always be reviewed by the conscious and somewhat awake against anomalies…
yes yes sometimes a cigar is just…
But…
too many dimensions of chess even for my often wandering mind…
Ismailsaymaz has a video on his twit account purporting to show the retake of cnnTurk with the police trying to get the military rounded up quickly, with a few resisting, only to then be attacked by the “crowd” who right, left and squared, punch the living life out of the soldiers, ignoring the police attempt to then protect the soldiers from the mob…
also, the bridge surrender photos and videos bouncing around the web show what appears to be angry citizens kicking, punching and hitting the soldiers with belts…
If sultan attaturk 2(erdo) staged all this, a palm d’or is due…no kayfabe or andre the giant vs bruno samartino on this uhf channel show
And the reaction of that turkish crowd is actually a good thing…anyone, including sultan erdo, will have to think twice if they imagine imposition upon these now freedom loving people who climbed aboard moving tanks and hung on while the coup krewe tried to shake them off by running over cars…
Jeffersons tired old body must be smirking right about now…
The freedom genie is out of the bottle in turkey…even erdo must realize that after last night…
The reason I think tricking the soldiers more likely reflects a false flag because it is of a piece with the bad planning and low level of leadership of the coup. Not capturing the political leadership of Turkey, a key element of a successful operation, wasn’t even attempted. Also, the government says the coup leader was a Colonel who was basically a lawyer, not a barracks-based leader.
More evidence: Erdogan, addressing the nation, said the coup was a “gift from God” because he could get on with consolidating his power. He has already arrested supreme court justices and dismissed another 2,800 judges.
Here is Pat Lang’s take on the coup:
From what I am hearing from sources in Turkey, this may have been a pre-emptive “false flag” operation in which a group of members of the armed forces were sent into the fraudulent “coup” by Erdogan loyalists among senior officers. He has appointed many. IOW the people in the “coup” may have been deliberately sacrificed as “props” so that Erdogan could whip up his followers and consolidate power before he changes the constitution to make himself an absolute ruler.
So, if you’re planning a military coup your idea of how to conduct it is to tell everybody your plans because there is no way it can be betrayed?
Not evidence. Erdogan was rumored to be drawing up lists for another round of purges anyway. Launching a half-assed coup in response seems like a logical but particularly desperate thing to do.
I’m not sure that it’s necessarily a false flag operation. It’s just as likely that the military junta behind it wasn’t all that organized and started to unravel when some of the plotters lost their nerve. They had already captured the Army military headquarters and had MIT HQ under siege in Ankara.
I fully expected to wake up to Istanbul in loyalist hands with Ankara being held by the Junta. Most of the heavy fighting was in the capital. It appears they just gave up for whatever reason.
When you consider all the benefits Erdogan gets from a failed coup, combined with the fact that the plotters apparently made no attempt to kill or arrest him (which one would think would be Step One) it does seem like a good candidate for a ‘false flag’. (Consider how it would have gone if Erdogan was “missing or dead”, instead of giving speeches on national TV. Did he create his own Yeltsin on a tank moment?)
Even better, it could be a “real” false flag. Find a clique of conspiratorial, dedicated and none-too-bright field officers and give them a push at the right time. Voila! Instant populatirty booster, and the perfect excuse to cut the senior military (who might pull off an actual coup) down to size.
Basically the same thing as the FBI’s endless “terror” arrests, our countless other police/state provocations of radicals, just kicked up a level or three.
It seems like everybody propagating the false flag theory are making previous military juntas who’ve launched coups into an act of heroism or something. They aren’t to be admired given their crimes. This bloody history is why people who hate Erdogan didn’t rally to the coup. Ultimately, neither Erdogan or a military junta in power mean anything other than disaster for the people of Turkey.
Insect loss article
I grew up in a very rural area (forest on a lake, closest town 15 miles away rural) and one thing that always struck me when I traveled (and now move) was the utter and complete absence of insect sounds during the day and night in cities and even within smaller towns.
The days are filled with the sounds of cars and people (maybe a few birds) and late nights are silence. The high pitch chattering and whines of beetles, and dragon flies hunting or mating among other insect sounds are non existent. At night there are not 100’s of crickets chirping but nothing but cars and people.
It’s so easy to ignore the things we can’t see clearly (ravaged oceans and insect populations etc.), completely avoiding any underlying issues affecting those things to our detriment.
I hear them in the backyard for a short while every night, then silence.
On some really hot summer nights, usually late August and into September, when it was so hot here that I can’t sleep, they keep going for a long time to make it even harder to fall asleep.
With more enlightenment, one day (and one night), I will appreciate their music of the night…if they haven’t disappeared, like their relatives in many places in the world.
Hydorbreaking, a term from the linked article, is tied to the human electricity demand daily cycle.
What is the remedy? A draw back of wind power is its inability to meet that cycle. And one advantage of hydropower is that it can be applied to peak load demand.
Now we know one externality.
Yes so very, very many externalities like how solar panels payback is calculated only using the energy required to make them in their end production facilitity (always click through to the report on any article that claims otherwise, you will always find the underlying research cited does not support the claims in such articles).
They do not include mining costs, caustic chemical manf disposal or storage costs, silicon production (which is most definitely not green), set up, equipment carbon costs, energy storage (batteries), and a host of other carbon costs. This is just carbon costs their are many, many other environmental costs as well.
And let’s assume they were able to use some facking magic to produce these things that had zero externalities/carbon emissions, and we can continue on our merry way with all the energy a little species could want, how many facking solar panels would we need to sustain the energy needs of 9billion, 12 billion, 20 billion!
I facking hate the mythology of “green energy” it just gives humanity an excuse to do nothing about population, the makeup of society or lifestyles, we can just sit back and go “green energy will save us, now which color minivan should I get next year to shuttle around my five kids”.
what’s your source for this?
Its a pdf so Google – “Energy Requirements and CO2 Mitigation Potential of PV Systems, Photovoltaics and the Environment” by alsema. The albrect University link in google has the full pdf.
This “study” (if one can call it that, you will see what I mean when you read it) forms the foundation of literally (and I mean literally) all studies and reports on the energy requirements of solar production.
Question: Could Erdogan have devised this ‘coup’? late last night a few ‘retired’ spies mentioned how an Erdogan staged coup would strengthen his power to implement stronger reforms while sterilizing his military. they based this on the small number of military involved and that they freely dispersed tanks and jets from strongly guarded bases.
but earlier on the same day Erdogan apologizes to everyone. how could this strengthen a power grab in house or abroad? http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21702311-president-erdogans-attitudes-israel-russia-and-syria-have-undergone-sudden-reset-turkey
It is looking like a false flag to me. He has sacked over 2700 judges and prosecutors, and he has installed a puppet premier. Effectively making the MPs in parliament powerless.
The idea this man is the wests great friend is a joke. Cameron and Merkel, and Obama/Clinton want him in the EU as soon as. Laughable.
The EU has never wanted Turkey as part of the EU but they definitely want Turkey as a member of NATO. Turkey will not be a member of the EU for generations if ever.
“Brexit Means Brexit”
While the EU – and Britain’s current “deal” with the US is based on the default WTO rules, of course the US wants to get the toxic TTIP in place. Britain would not be part of that if not part of the EU. Would any future “back of the queue” deal between Britain and the US necessarily have to look like TTIP? i.e. is TTIP a ‘platform’ like the TPP?
But on the “back of the queue” issue: it has long been understood by Brits that the heart of the “special relationship” with the US has been the convenient use of Britain by the US as an aircraft and missile carrier. Hence Trident has been bought and renewed dearly from the US a number of times over the past 40 years. Trident comes up for renewal and they are having a vote in Parliament on Monday next. This is a vote to commit something like $150 billion to pay for it.
But surely Trident is the supreme example of a bargaining chip that the US desperately wants but most Brits could care less about. Why on earth would a government eager to conclude a Trade Deal not link the successful and swift conclusion of that deal with the renewal of Trident?
It’s what the US most uses Britain for.
(Although p.s. a future of “Trident and TTIP” looks like a toxic relationship to me).
Trident is not a bargaining chip. It is part of the offensive nuclear weaponry that threatens us all with suicide. So a few peckerheads can ply the Great Game, with manifest incompetence and one near-nuclear-“exchange” after another. One of these times “cooler heads” and dumb Fokking luck are not going to “prevail.”
In the meantime, the contractors are getting richer.
I know this was not the main point of your comment, but no, there is no WTO “default”. Virtually all of the UK’s trade deals are through the EU and it can’t negotiate new ones until it has exited the EU. That is in the EU rules.
And the WTO has said it can’t “cut and paste” its existing terms, the UK has to negotiate.
The WTO said this several times before the Brexit vote, I assume in an effort to get the attention of the British press and therefore the public as to what a clusterfuck a Brexit would be.
I’ve only done very basic homework and it’s vastly worse than I imagined. The Tories have been utterly reckless. And they seem to think if they huff and puff they’ll get all sorts of special treatment, which is not going to happen.
See here for details:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/07/brexit-huge-spanner-in-the-works-negotiation-of-new-uk-trade-deals-verboten-till-exit-complete.html
Hot nights in Houston (link above):
Seems to be a logical problem with the claim that 83° tied the record daily minimum for July … yet a higher daily minimum of 84° was recorded in July 1895. That don’t count?
There is also a cherry picking issue, in that temperature records for the newer airport north of town go back only to 1969, whereas central Houston has a much longer time series back to the 19th century … which didn’t set a new record.
Finally, July nighttime lows in the low 80s would not strike anyone on the Gulf coast — from Texas to Florida, and even farther inland — as unusual. Dr Jeff needs to have hisself an iced tea and calm down.
I’m here to testify to your last sentence. Earlier this week I was awoken by animal noises. Our cat was having a growling contest with a raccoon on our front porch at three in the morning. A bowl of hard cat food remnants seemed to be the point of contention. We’ve also seen some songbirds making off with the cat food pellets during the day. The birds seem to prefer the cat food to the bird seed we have hanging in a feeder next to the porch. I always check the thermometer we have attached to one of the columns of the porch. At three AM it read eighty two degrees. What’s going to happen to all we pampered urbanites when electricity is rationed? No air conditioning at night, and a hammock on the porch, that’s what.
We humans have “grown up” as a species in an anomalous mild climate. This global warming, for whatever reasons, is a ‘reversion to the mean’ climatologically.
This has been an unusually prolonged interglacial warm period — 14,000 years, more or less.
A new ice age is humanity’s biggest long-term worry.
But it looks like those now alive may skate from being frozen into statues, thanks to this final “crack-up boom” in temperature.
Ski Mississippi! :-)
The ice age cometh, there’s no doubt in my mind. Every time I channel global warming it comes back to me as a phantom. Finally I gave up because the signal was the same every single time.
I’d bet money none of the doomer scenarios will come even close to happening.
Of course, I also bet money on GLD at 175 back a few years ago. The advice I give myself is “You have to stay humble, even when you’re overflowing with self-confidence.” haha
Jim Haygood,
I wouldn’t worry about an ice age. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is above 400 parts per million and climbing, and there hasn’t been that high a level, by a long shot, since 3 to 5 million years ago. The current round of ice ages began well after that.
We may have knocked the glacial/interglacial pattern off by more than ten thousand years. This is that uncontrolled experiment we hear about.
Back in the long ago, New Orleans had the largest ski club in the US.
No air conditioning at night, and a hammock on the porch, that’s what.
Nothing wrong with that. That’s what we did as kids and it was considered fun back then.
Gee whiz, Mom and Dad, now that all the insects are disappearing it will be even funner. :)
Sorry, I’m in my sarcastic wise guy mood – all this news on AGW, life in the general term, and politics is getting to my psyche. Maybe it’s time to retire, pack up a Scamp or Casita and travel around to see what’s left of my childhood before it completely disappears. I know “you can never go back home”, but it seems the human world is ensuring this to an extreme boundary… or further.
All this reminds me of a conversation I heard at work last week; one of the women was saying that there was a cricket somewhere in her house keeping her from sleeping at night and she spent hours hunting it down. I mentioned to her that if she found anymore, bring ’em over to my house. I always found it to be the best “white noise” background ever to bring on a restful night’s sleep. I hear crickets at night and think “all is right with the world”, particularly when I’m sleeping in a hammock.
As kids, my brother and I slept in the basement where it was cool. Lots of our friends also slept in their basement when it got hot so were not unique. It was a bit of a thing to see how well you could fix your spot up.
No basements in most of Florida. Swamp coolers don’t work in humid air. People die of hyperthermia.
Of course many, including here, are happy to write off “Flori-DUH” on account of Gore-ism, and the likelihood most of our homes will be going under water the old fashioned way, and Sodom and Gomorrah, aka Ft. Laud and Miami.
The helpless, in the nursing homes, were as I recall left to drown on New Orleans….
Yep. Katrina was the defining neo-liberal natural disaster.
Sodom by the Sea is South Beach. My mom finally sold the house on Miami Beach to a same sex ‘swinging’ couple who wanted easy access to some “nightlife.” If you think that topless beaches are risqué, you should see what goes on after dark below 21st street. Everything and anything. South Beach is not family friendly, unless you are a family of “nasty chickens.”
Toodles!
Crickets outside your window is one thing. Cricket in your room, something else altogether.
That’s when the gekkos hiding up in your window curtain valences during the day prove their worth.
So was I, Hillary was on TV.
yeah the 83 vs 84 degree thing should be cleared up. maybe a typo. but they aren’t saying minimums of 80 are unusual; they are saying there are more of them. 9 of 13 up through the 13th, 3d most ever. the linked articles from the link go into more detail.
Common knowledge:
Oy vey … that’s gotta be the low point of living in The Bagel [as Taki calls it]: when the multiply-degreed pseudo-educated begin reciting snippets from the Saddam’s WMDs paper to each other as received wisdom.
That’s usually when I recall an urgent need to rush home and check the pet’s water dish.
“I didn’t know you had a pet,” someone says as I bolt out the door. :-)
The 28 pages, classic limited hangout by Brennan. They left out the command center of Brennan’s Saudi cutouts.
http://whowhatwhy.org/2016/07/15/28-pages-released-saudi-911-ties-missed/
They also left out the command center of Brennan’s Israeli cutouts
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/01/12/mapping-911-fort-lee/
If Jill Stein thought that promising to put Snowden in her cabinet would win the geek vote she was mistaken.
I have not read anywhere that she would make him the ambassador to Russia, though he is already there, nor Assange our diplomatic guy in London.
Slashdot is the Free Republic of technology news, as one /.er’s .sig says. Most of the technologist left has apparently gone elsewhere. Reddit, at a guess.
Wow. From the article on Dilma Rousseff of Brazil:
The raises were 41%.
the us supreme ct sees nothing wrong with this.
Steve Israel, the DCCC, Long Island, and racism.
Chilling quote From the article about FBI crackdown on BLM protests
See: Occupy…for how it’s done.
Really, these social movements aren’t a true threat to anything. Law enforcement just finds it a lot safer than to hang out in South Side Chicago, for instance.
Skynet is coming? Skynet is here: neoliberalism is the OS and faceboooo, Amazone etc are the data processing units. Drones are the punishers.
BTW, Skynet quietly became conscious on December 17, 1992. Nobody noticed.
Spartacus, pull the nails out, go home and stop hanging around.
NAFTA signing day!
That’s not the National Broadcasting Company or any of their sites. It’s a German fake.
note “nbcpoll.com” not “nbc.com”
Also, the unchanged WordPress footer that says “FLEX MAG” with some lorem ipsum…
Hopefully, President Trump appoints General Flynn as Secretary of State. In the Der Spiegel interview, he comes across as quite sane. As Secretary of State he could actually impact the world for good rather than being stuck as Vice President.
I was disappointed that he didn’t choose him as a running mate. IMO it signaled he’s going for solidifying the crazy GOP base and ceding the “Democrats” to Clinton.
Then again there base doesn’t exactly show up for anyone who remotely recognizes the other side of the aisle as being sane. We call people DINOs and they call theirs RINOs
The Secretary of State pick will be the tell. VP is meat for the base.
Re: Turkish Coup, maybe the correct phrase is, Sting Operation.
Good call.
According to a whois lookup, this site is directly owned by GoDaddy.
For general info, based on ARIN mandatory requirements when registering ip addresses, this site is either directly owned by GoDaddy or GoDaddy is breaking the regulations since the mandatory fields only contain GoDaddy addresses and emails for ownership, abuse contacts, ph numbers, etc.
For example, from ARIN, The Administrative (Admin) POC provides oversight for an Org ID and all resources it has authority over, and may be an individual or a role account. An Admin POC can only be connected directly to an Org ID, and there can be only one per Org ID. The Admin POC is permitted to update the Org ID, manage, update, and request resources, as well as manage reverse delegations..
GoDaddy does not list the Admin POC at all, but all other requirements are tied directly to GoDaddy. Be aware, though, that GoDaddy has been sued at least once for regularly breaking these requirements for certain customers (customers, I assume, that pay GoDaddy for this privilege).
Based on some cursory web searches, Blake Irving, the CEO of GoDaddy, seems to be a strong supporter of HRC.
(The above GoDaddy info was supposed to be in direct reply to Wilbur, above)
For privacy, a registrant may use Go Daddy as the registrant of record.
So Trump made the announcement this morning and I watched. For those who want the full effect:
https://youtu.be/zkqJOSP-sDY
It was as usual for Trump somewhat stream of consciousness. And one point where I agree with the Washington Post it was about Trump more than Pence. Where I disagree with much of the media coverage I’ve seen, it was more effective than the dog and pony shows that constitute the more polished ‘professional’ announcements.
Although Pence was more on the traditional side than Trump was.
Commentary rundown:
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/07/16/reviews-in-trumps-announcement-vp-pence-insanely-bad.html
My take away.
1.) Trump sold Pence. Seriously sold him. If I didn’t know better I’d be impressed.
2.) He made strong points about the effectiveness of his campaign and his organization
3.) He hit Clinton hard. And for good measure he kneecapped Bill when
4.) He talked about the effect of NAFTA and our trade deals.
5.) He went after evangelicals, and sent out his biggest bargaining chip to date. (and terrifying me in the process.)
6.) He flew his non traditional political flag by saying flat out saying that one of the reasons for choosing Pence was Party Unity.
Pence was not as effective a salesman, but he did come off as intelligent, steady and concerned. His use of religion is going to be too much for some and reassuring for others.
I’ve been unable to find a transcript.
But once again, I’m pretty damn sure that the media has got it wrong about what works and what doesn’t.
Both of the major party candidates are overwhelmingly bad and unfit choices to be President. Trump is the wild card, but Pence is a detriment for people who want less focus on religion in this country and less doctrinaire corporate toadying garbage. I’m sure I’ll dislike Clinton’s choice of running mate as much if not more. No chance that America will get the best of the bad lot on the ballot as that person will never get elected and would get torn to shreds in Washington.
It is going to be tough watching this election season, and even tougher watching the outcome. And there is no relief in hope in Congress. I can’t even kid myself any longer we are seriously screwed.
Thank you for the link.
The stand out – on NAFTA and American companies moving their manufacturing to Mexico (alluding to tariffs):
Ahh, Spiked (“After Brexit: the myth of post‑truth politics”). Brexit seems to have rejuvinated them. Pity.
Memoirs of some revolutionaries
From February 2015
William Engdahl on Operation Gladio, Fethullah Gülen & One World Government
Thanks.
Twitter storm on Turkey
Angela Eagle Warns Labour Risks Becoming The ‘New Nasty Party’
“Entryism”. That’s one that Orwell missed.
Entryists…is that what Sander supporters are?
Three-quarters of newspaper stories about Jeremy Corbyn fail to accurately report his views, LSE study finds
In New Labour parlance, the researchers are factists.
Even deep space is a well of infinity
I read on the internet today about a new telescope array in South Africa that found 1600 new galaxies in a teeny dot of the sky. this new telescope can see 10,000 times better than any other telescope – and we all thought that the Hubble telescope was amazing.
this is more than amazing. every thing is amazing. why are there so many galaxies? there’s more than 1 for each person on earth, each person who has ever lived has their own galaxy. It seems like an awesome responsibility.
You’d wonder if these are all still there because what you see is so long ago. Where are they now? If you went there every time you looked it would be different, approaching it that is. If you approach a tree it’s different in your mind every step. If you approach a deer and it doesn’t run you’ll see it’s black eyes, very different from it next to a tree. nothing is fixed except as ideas, but not as reality.
when they invent telescopes to see things now unseen it will be even more amazing. all the things that are there that you didn’t see, and what you saw is now just a speck in some incredible tableaux of new perceptiion. that’s science for you. Seeing things that you didn’t see that you think were always there. But not really, they were only there in potential in a state of possibility. somehow you don’t even need science for that, you can do that in your mind alone, but it’s not quite as fabulous without the machines of science. but the machine of science don’t change the basic phenomenon of the evolution of seeing.
the infinite well is always there no matter where you look. It’s weird how the ground is just as vast as the sky and every grain of dirt is a galaxy of perception. still I wouldn’t mind looking through one of those telecopes. but it would be good to have some wine and maybe some Xanax, just in case it got a bit exciting thinking about how strange everything is. why are there 1600 galaxies in one speck of sky that were never seen before? maybe they aren’t really what they seem to be. that’ when it gets interesting and you can still think quite well with only one Xanax and a glass or two. After that, forget it.
If you look at money and economics like this, it really opens things up. that’s for sure
The Scale of the Universe.
Boggles the mind. There is a photo somewhere in which the hubble telescope covers a portion of the sky the size of a dime. The immense number of galaxies is simply stunning.
Did a google. I don’t think this is the photo I remember but close enough. It is a narrow keyhole image. Shows galaxies…not individual stars. On average, hundred billion stars in a galaxy. How many planets to a star?
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1996/01/image/a/
Re. ”
Get Home Safely: 10 Rules of Survival”
Not just blacks, but all people, especially teenagers. Every American should watch this video:
“Don’t Talk To The Police”…it’s by a law professor at Regent’s University.
http://truthinjustice.org/don%27t-talk.htm
Nothing wrong with respecting cops and the job they do, but there’s no reason to dig your own fate with your mouth, even if you are innocent, which as the video shows, can happen to the most honest citizen who has done nothing.
I’ve been looking at https://twitter.com/zeynep for credible commentary on Turkey. She’s a Turkish-born sociologist who works in the US but happened to be in Turkey when the coup happened, and has been tweeting thoughtfully.
PLM: Penguin Lives Matter
ALM: All Lives Matter
Last call for alcohol…gonna stick with my crazy notion about Germany and the turkish coup…
very strange “diplomatic protocol” language…merkel almost cut and paste the language used by the “peace” coup…
gulen biggest operations outside of turkey are in germany…???
hope none of the 250 german soldiers with the tornado recon planes at incirlik were hanging out with the people who were refueling the coup planes…
a few days ago, germany promised to pull its troops out of incirlik if erdo did not allow german mp’s to take photo op tours of the airbase for the voters back home…
Almost everyone around the globe has used language specifically mentioning either erdo by name or the democratically elected turkish govt…
neither mutti nor any other german politician seems to have said the magic woid…
Cui prodest…
Just go out out even further out on an already shaky limb here, maybe the coup was so clumsy and stupid because it was Merkel’s first and they lacked experience? (We don’t have any such excuse, but that’s another topic.)
On a more serious note, I think the Irish Times opinion piece makes a good and too-obvious-to-be-stated point: “Turkey is one of Europe’s great powers.”
The nc crowd does not seem too big on the putsch news so will kinda let it go…have a pending comment for today about huma and certain ties she has to the sauds and gulen…
and the very strange german response language, especially the body language with merkel where she says “the magic woids” but then goes off on sultan erdo…
but I doubt jeff and bernie will play so you can let it die in moderation if you think it just leads to a dead end….
If the Flynn interview is a true indicator of the Trump foreign policy approach, then I frankly hope that the Donald wins in November.
Flynn skewered both Dubya and Obie by denouncing both the Iraq War and the Libyan War. He outlined what would be in effect a third party foreign policy for the USA, neither isolationist nor hegemonist.
The interviewer asked some pointed and provocative questions, but Flynn didn’t waffle on any of them. It was a nice change to hear someone talk foreign policy in a way that was both plain-speaking and non-threatening..