Scientists breed goats that produce spider silk PhysOrg. This is the weirdest headline I have seen in quite a while.
When a Fire Breaks Out In the Operating Room Maggie Mahar (hat tip reader Francois T). Eeek!
Mobile phones responsible for disappearance of honey bee Telegraph
Nobel-winning Elders deplore Gaza flotilla attack The Hindu
Ed Markey Demands BP Produce Oil Plume Research, Data Huffington Post
Don’t Worry About Oil Spill. Remember: Oysters Love Crude Oil! Consumerist
10-Year TIPS Yield Brad DeLong
Obamacare taking on water Washington Examiner (hat tip reader Pat C). Be sure to read the data from various polls.
80% Favor Auditing the Federal Reserve Rasmussen Reports (hat tip reader Pat C)
The good professor, lack of agency, and pain Lambert Strether
Venting Online, Consumers Can Find Themselves in Court New York Times
The west re-examines the rat race Gideon Rachman, Financial Times
Memory, Meaning, Moments and Madness: Wanderers in No Man’s Land Chris Floyd
Antidote du jour:
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Actually, transgenic goats have been used as bioreactors and recombinant drug production systems for about twenty years now. Breasts produce and secrete milk which is a mixture of fats and proteins. Milk production does not harm the animal, you get lots of protein, and it is easy to purify your protein of interest from the transgenic goat’s milk. I wonder though why they didn’t attempt to make transgenic silkworms. Silkworm technology is just as robust, and people know how to harvest the silk. Perhaps it has been tried and has failed, but if it were successful, such silk would be stronger than steel or kevlar wires of the same diameter.
The Japanese have had recombinant silkworms that produce spider dragline silk threads for over a year now. They likely have a superior product since the silkworms have polymerized the spider silk for them. The spider silk protein goats milk likely has unpolymerized silk protein in it making it necessary to isolate and purify the protein and then get it to self assemble. This could revolutionize the silk industry. Cool! Imagine a lightweight bulletproof silk shirt or blouse, though we’ll see lighter bulletproof vests first.
Re: the ObamaCare article. Amazing polling, and I’ve seen it replicated by many pollsters. That “yes” vote by many Dems will come back to haunt them if this dynamic stays in place.
I can see Nancy Pelosi, living out her last days as a back-bencher, and on her deathbed, instead of gasping out “Rosebud”, she’ll be gasping, “Bush’s fault. Bush’s fault….”
In one way, ObamaCare will serve as a huge jobs bill – with all of the new paperwork required (1099’s for everyone a business does $600 in business with?), this bill is “No Accountant Left Behind.”
Unfortunately, all of the Chinese and Indian students graduating soon are MUCH better at math than their American counterparts, and willing to handle the job at 20% of the wages that an American accountant would demand.
I hear the sound of pencils sharpening from Bangalore to Beijing….
What is with Americans?
Doctors and nurses, not actuaries or accountants or insurance companies, provide health care.
Single-payer universal health care. Cheap, and effective.
5 out of 6 patients in the developed world swear by it…
“What is with Americans?
Doctors and nurses, not actuaries or accountants or insurance companies, provide health care.
Single-payer universal health care. Cheap, and effective.
5 out of 6 patients in the developed world swear by it…”
What is it with Americans? Nine out of ten Americans don’t trust the government. OK, I just pulled that out of my butt, but I doubt 5/6 of developed world residents would “swear by” universal health care, either. Some like aspects of it, some dislike aspects of it. The wealthier ones often come to America for treatment. Funny thing, that.
Anyway, at this point, would you say trust in the government re your health (or much of anything else) is justified? I do not. I have a lot of company, and it isn’t an irrational point of view.
Perhaps not irrational: but IMO unhealthy.
I understand wanting to get a second opinion.
And even with “socialized” health care, one is always at liberty….to refuse to consent to the prescribed treatments.
Just because it’s not irrational doesn’t mean we have to agree with it.
You again have set up a false dichotomy (the government versus the good). The question is not whether I think the government would do a “good” job. The question is whether I think the government would do a *better* job than the alternatives out there. The insurance model, in my opinion, has failed. We have high costs and poor service. From my investigation into the issue in other wealthy countries with single payer, the citizens in such countries have had fewer complaints than here in the US (yes, this is only anecdotal, but whatever, prove me wrong).
If you have the “perfect” model of health care provision, please explicate. Please don’t waste your time with a simplistic private competition analysis. I am a huge fan of Hayek and his belief in competition. Competition is one of the greatest things ever and works excellently in commodified markets with non-catastrophic costs. But some markets fail. This is not subject to dispute. What is subject to dispute is whether the market for health care is one of them. I think so. You don’t. Neither view is irrational. I believe mine has more support, but show me facts, real facts, that I am wrong, and I will change my mind. And make your argument subtle and make it thoughtful. Weak sh*t gets swatted away quickly and easily around here.
Yes, the government sucks. No argument there. So does democracy. It’s the worst thing ever invented for how to run a society, well, except for all the others.
It’s not strictly a matter of whether the reform is “good” or “less bad” than the existing mess. It is also a question of control versus freedom. Some people value freedom as a good thing, even if that means freedom to have bad outcomes. As the government fails horribly on more and more issues, people are more willing to believe they’d be better off with less government “help.” It’s intuitively obvious, unless one is philosophically rigid or has a financial attachment to big government.
Also, what Obama finally signed is not what he promised. So there’s that aspect of it as well. It was a betrayal of trust, I think, as well as a failure of leadership.
umm, the US government is already the largest health insurer in the US.
Yes, Pepe. And some of us want desperately to change that.
To what exactly Eric? Change it to what?
I am wondering what people think of universal pet health care?
Last year, I spent more healthcare money on my adopted cat than myself. I don’t know if I can afford it again this year.
Veterinarians — same cost of education, no middle man to obfuscate the cost of care. Sigh.
In other news…
The Israeli high seas debacle.
Gaza/Palestine is a big issue in Turkey, particularly as Israel has blown off its ally in various ways the past couple years. Now that Turkish nationals have been killed, and a ship registered tot he nation has been “attacked” on the open seas, it’s a huge issue with the public.
EU wants Turkey in (or at least wants Turkey wanting in.) EU wants the Turkish public desiring to join, and definitely doesn’t want Islamic/religious political parties in control capable of swaying public opinion or scuttling EU bond building efforts.
Turkey is a NATO ally.
Turkey has vowed to send more flotillas, to be accompanied by Turkish Naval vessels. (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/5/31/871683/-Turkeys-vows-to-send-more-Gaza-supply-ships-w-Turkish-Navy)
NATO allies are compelled to support Turkey.
The UN Security Council (of which Lebanon is the current Presidency holder) has spoken out against the “attack,” and is drafting text condemning Israel and calling for Ban Ki Moon to initiate an independent international investigation.
Israel has overplayed its hand…
In light of Greece, I’m guessing a lot of people also don’t want anything happening, that paints a gloomy picture for the EU’s future.
That’s a lot of cards to be stacking against Israel.
This is not aboput some piddly loss of life: it is about the integrity of Turkish National Sovereignity as embodied on a Turkish vessel in international waters.
As this directly impacts as essential incident of Turkey’s Sovereignioty, Israel oufght to have thought twice about attacking Turkey with military force: for that is what she did.
And the Turkish State and its Generals CANNOT let this pass.
That is what countries and nations are all about – defending their exclusive territorial sovereignity – as Israel perhaps knows, better than others, perhaps.
My point was that Israel and Gaza are a big issue in Turkey.
Nations will act predictably when their sovereignty is threatened.
The public’s reaction however, is more at the whim of media/political influence.
In this case however, because turkish nationals were killed — a more tangible violation to common people than territorial/sovereignty issues — neither the Turkish govt nor the EU have much wiggle room for letting Israel slide, even if they wanted to. Obviously, the power or Israel’s media influence is tremendously hobbled.
The point is, that a time when the EU is trying to secure a favorable opinion with the turkish public, AND trying to paint a rosie future for EU strength and expansion, both govts find their hands tied with regard to taking anything but a hard posiition against Israel.
Read more about the group that organized the flotilla:
http://www.freegaza.org/
Israel offered to allow the aide to be distributed but only if it was examined first. If it was truly “humanitarian” it would be allowed to be distributed. But these “humanitarians” refused the offer. They were told in no uncertain terms that they would not be allowed to disperse this aide without inspection because it was known to Israel that among these “humanitarians” there were known and suspected terrorists. If this was in reality “humanitarian” aide why do you suppose that they refused to have it inspected? Why do you suppose that these “humanitarians” provoked a show down? Why do you suppose that the were armed laying in wait for the Israeli response to their provocation?
As far as I’m concerned, with full co-operation of the media, this is nothing more than another suicide attack for the sole purpose of destroying the State of Israel by demeaning the state in the eyes of it’s allies.
If this isn’t true, ask yourself why is Egypt also blockading Gaza?
If the “humanitarians” where truly just that, why would the not allow an inspection of there so called aide.
For the life of me I can’t understand how or why the media
the media allow themselves to be complicit in this so obvi
Simple answer — because Israel could have used a prop fouler to incapacitate the ship, then towed it anywhere it liked.
Rahter than that, they boarded the vessel in open water, knowing it was an registered to an ally, and did so commando style. The point being, to send a strong message about Israel’s willingness to use extreme force. It was an unnecessary show of force, a political gesture. It worked. Everyone has seen it. The problem is, the rest of the world doesn’t perceive Israel’s demonstration of force to be productive, so its actually hurting Israel’s image.
There’s no media conspiracy here. It is identical to when police swat raid a home and kill the occupants pets and other occupants, when the safer and more logical option, would be to just surveil and arrest the person as they exit the home.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/zero-hedge-video-analysis-reveals-paintball-guns-secret-turkish-weapon
I hope you’re just totally hilarious, because that link was great.. Turkish Cavalry?
This was a replay of Israel’s commando attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, in which they killed many American sailors. Only then they got away with it because it was an American ship.
Israel offered to allow the aide to be distributed but only if it was examined first. If it was truly “humanitarian” it would be allowed to be distributed. But these “humanitarians” refused the offer. They were told in no uncertain terms that they would not be allowed to disperse this aide without inspection because it was known to Israel that among these “humanitarians” there were known and suspected terrorists. If this was in reality “humanitarian” aide why do you suppose that they refused to have it inspected? Why do you suppose that these “humanitarians” provoked a show down? Why do you suppose that the were armed laying in wait for the Israeli response to their provocation?
As far as I’m concerned, with full co-operation of the media, this is nothing more than another suicide attack for the sole purpose of destroying the State of Israel by demeaning the state in the eyes of it’s allies.
If this isn’t true, ask yourself why is Egypt also blockading Gaza?
If the “humanitarians” where truly just that, why would the not allow an inspection of there so called aide.
For the life of me I can’t understand how or why the media
the media allow themselves to be complicit in this anti-Israeli plot.
Perhaps because we have seen this all before. As long as you are asking why no one is asking things, you might try asking why the Israelis have been running a blockade of Gaza in the first place. It is in fact to put the squeeze on the civilian population of Gaza, a war crime, in an effort to topple the popularly elected Hamas government there. Don’t talk to me about arms either. The Turkish ship had been searched by Turkish authorities before it left Istanbul. The Israelies knew this. Also if you are wondering about weapons those come through tunnels on the border with Egypt. Egypt is a dictatorship and has problems with Hamas because of the Mubarak’s long running conflict with the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt. As for funneling the supplies through Israel, this is what is happening now. It gets put in Israeli warehouses and gets trickled in to Gaza if and when the Israelis feel like it. You really need to reassess who is doing what to whom. All of the governments in the region are both repressive and oppressive, including Israel’s. Change the name and look at Israel anew and you would probably have no trouble identifying it as a corrupt, poorly managed apartheid state run by a clique of tinpot fascists. But because it is called Israel, all of a sudden we are supposed to forget the standards we would apply to any other state? Thanks but no thanks, I don’t buy this.
This is not my fight: but Israel’s decisions as to what is NOT humanitarian in nature is sweepingly broad:
“…The few items merchants are allowed to trade in are divided into three categories: food, medicine and detergent. Everything else is forbidden – including building materials (which are necessary to rehabilitate Gaza’s ruins and rebuild its infrastructure), electric appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines, spare machine and car parts, fabrics, threads, needles, light bulbs, candles, matches, books, musical instruments, crayons, clothing, shoes, mattresses, sheets, blankets, cutlery, crockery, cups, glasses and animals. Many of the banned products are imported through the tunnels and can be found in Gaza’s markets.
Pasta, which had been forbidden in the past, is now allowed, after U.S. Senator John Kerry expressed his astonishment at the ban during a visit to Gaza in February. But tea, coffee, sausages, semolina, milk products in large packages and most baking products are forbidden. So are industrial commodities for manufacturing food products, chocolate, sesame seeds and nuts. Israel does allow importing fruit, milk products in small packages and frozen food products as well as limited amounts of industrial fuel…’
To some the ban of musical instruments may appear insignificant, but what of Israel’s ban on hearing aids..
And it was only this past Monday that Israel lifted its ban on shoes and clothes. Lentils, tomato paste, cilantro, margarine, fresh meat, vinegar, jam, honey etc., are still on the banned list. The list goes on”
Link to source:
http://www.dci-pal.org/english/display.cfm?DocId=1154&CategoryId=3.
But in my books, this was a simple case of israel violating Turkey’s national sovereignty. That is all, really.
This is one for the diplomats.
Oh, and Egypt’s temporarily raised the siege, it seems.
Israel does not exist alone among the nations, you know.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6502H820100601
Like I said, one for the diplomats.
Not popular opinion.
I’d like to know how much our Israeli-occupied government is paying the Egyptians to help keep Gazans locked up in an open-air prison, enabling Israeli pilots to shoot them down like starving fish in an over-crowded barrel.
I couldn’t disagree with you more, nowhereman. Look at how the map of Israel and its occupied territories has evolved from 1945 to the present (see link below) and you’ll quickly and decisively come to the conclusion, as I have, that the Israelis are out to swipe the Palestinians off the map in either one of three ways: 1) by running all remaining Palestinians off what little remains of Palestine, forcing them into exile; 2) by continuing to treat Palestinians as caged animals and then bulldoze them into extinction; or 3) by continuing to occupy what’s left of Palestine, treating their occupied subjects as people who are less than human.
http://www.thewall.org.uk/images/content/landloss-full.jpg
So no matter how you slice or dice the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there’s no denying that Israel’s treatment of its Palestinian subjects is inhumane to the nth degree. And for Israeli leaders to come forth and announce to the world that what they are doing to the Palestinians isn’t inhumane, by any stretch, are nothing but lying butchers of the worst kind! Putting this altogether, I’d describe what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians as giving them lethal doses of apartheid with the explicit intent to commit genocide.
Good comment and link. Israel has a maddening half-century of state-sponsored terrorism and flouting of international law. They’ve succeeded to date via corrupting the American political process, including spying and bribery, and just old-fashioned lobbying.
Today, it will surely prove very useful to have a presidential Chief of Staff who has dual Israeli-American citizenship and volunteered in the IDF: Rahm Emanuel. Sadly, Obama is not likely to press Israel on this any more than he has on settlements or on the Orwellian peace process.
Volunteered in the IDF? IIRC he packed cleaned tank tracks or something with a group of Jewish tourists. He didn’t “volunteer in the IDF.”
If it was truly “humanitarian” it would be allowed to be distributed.
Ah yes, the eternal call of the freedom-hating totalitarian thug: “If you have nothing to hide, if you don’t have a guilty conscience, then you wouldn’t object to everything we want to do to you.”
Freedom, privacy, dignity, self-respect, anything human, is incomprehensible and meaningless to such wretches.
Just as the Nazis claimed that aiding Jews in the Warsaw ghetto was illegal, the Zionists are claiming that aiding Muslims in the Gaza ghetto is illegal. And even though the allied forces failed to mobilize against the Nazis in order to save millions of Jews who were living within the Warsaw ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland, the allied forces mustn’t relive history by failing to mobilize against the Zionists in order to save a million or so Muslims who are living within the Gaza ghetto in Zionist-occupied Palestine.
extreme force keeps getting more extreme while our political elite enjoy the show..
Juan Cole posts on the UN Security Council resolution (extract):
“The world body insisted that Israel immediately release the 480 humanitarians it had taken captive, and demanded that it also let their ships go. The UNSC also instructed Israel to lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip, calling the siege “not sustainable.””
Ack. to Economists View
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/05/links-for-2010-05-31.html
Whoops! Juan Cole link is:
http://www.juancole.com/2010/06/historic-unsc-condemnation-of-israel-and-of-gaza-blockade-world-body-demands-release-of-aid-activists-ships.html
wrt the fire in the hospital: some surgeons are wannabe-engineers, but they misunderestimate the dangers. These fires are almost always caused by (pure) oxygen, which is a ‘known risk’ (there are some spectacular youtube videos of people ‘lighting up their barbecue with oxygen’).
Pure oxygen under pressure + fire = bad
i am waiting for the molecular biologists to put the genetic blueprint for photosythesis in human skin cells…
solar energy, the last frontier…
Skin-packs, like nicotine delibvery systems: expose to light, and bio-engineered photosynthesis occurs and delivers sugars across the skin barrier….who needs to eat?
Re SLAPP suits:
These are typical of the corporatist onslaught against all true politics and democracy. Look anywhere and you’ll see the real institution (e.g. in this case free speech and access to the impartial courts of law) being gutted and replaced with its fraudulent pseudo-democratic simulacrum (“free speech” for those with the loudest money-assisted voice, and Kafkaesque “access” rationed by wealth to courts which are “impartial” in judging the money-amplified voices they can hear with their special corporate headphones, namely the corporate-written and hijacked “law”).
In a true democracy, there would be sever penalties for the plaintiff and lawyer who assaulted constitutional rights in this way. It’s an assault not just on a particular defendant, but on the Bill of Rights itself.
Re the health racket bailout:
To the extent people realize how this bill is nothing but a plundering mission, with the IRS as privateering goon commissioned on behalf of insurance protection rackets, surely they must punish the criminals who supported it (including the Republicans, who really agree with the mandate but were handed a political gift by the insane Democrats).
This makes the Stamp Act look modest and reasonable.
Re the Freedom Flotilla:
I just wrote a long post on it, so anybody who wants my latest comment can read it here:
http://attempter.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/the-freedom-flotilla-and-the-neoliberal-assault-1-of-2/
Whoops, that’s “severe”. A Freudian slip indeed. :)
Great post on your site attempter!
————–
INTIMIDATION
SLAPP em with the law,
SLAPP em with the fist,
SLAPP em with the IDF,
Till they get the gist,
Hat to your hand!
Chin to your chest!
Kneel to your master!
And do what you do best!
Grovel and snivel,
And validate his lies,
With remedial plans,
You know won’t reach his eyes,
“If only they did this!”,
“Or if only they did that!”,
“All would be well!”,
“The economy would be fat!” …
When you play the game,
And avert your eyes,
You legitimize the master,
You legitimize his lies,
So pick up your gaze,
And puff out your chest,
Reclaim your humanity,
Join the Israeli massacre protest!
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
On the plus side, a number of States have banned SLAPPs.
So do not give up.
Thanks i ball.
And that poem’s right on target.
In a true democracy, you don’t have any rights. They can be voted away at any time.
With regard to Lambert Strether’s discussion of the language of (or lack of) agency in Krugman. A commonplace example of this familiar to any parent is how the schools now only speak of “consequences”, and never punishment. Always bothered me, now I understand why a little better.
The Washington Examiner? I suppose I could find a less objective website, but it would take some work.
Huffington Post
MSNBC
It’s not that hard…..
RE: ’10-Year TIPS Yield Brad DeLong’
What Mr DeLong’s chart proves is that a great deal of money is currently flowing into TIPS because US Treasury debt is perceived as the safest in the world at the present time.
‘Present time’ changes daily and money can flow out of US debt instruments as quickly as it is now flowing in.
Bond purchasers are the most savvy investors in the world (as a group and not counting fund managers).
It takes very little to trigger a stampede out of a soverigns debt issues…ask the Greeks, among others. Spreads can blow out overnight.
Mr DeLong reminds me of the lone cowboy circling the herd at night, talking to the cows in a soft comforting voice, trying to keep the cows from instant flight…a stampede iow.
Look at the volatility of the 10 year TIPS yield. Only a moron or an economist would look at the current value to make inferences about the long term debt carrying capacity based upon that number.
Yves, I hope you don’t take offense but I think it is important to post this one; ‘China Denies Speculation about Diversifying from Euros; Oil in Euros Revisited; No Good Currency Choice Except Gold’
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/06/china-denies-speculation-about.html
‘A net 105 billion euros ($129 billion) flowed out of the region’s fixed-income markets on an annualized basis in the first three months of the year, signaling a “broad shift” in appetite for euro-denominated assets, according to Nomura Holdings Inc. The region attracted a net 225 billion euros from foreign debt investors in 2009.’
“It’s clearly the case that there’s been an element of foreign central banks slowing down their euro purchases,” said Jens Nordvig, a managing director for foreign-exchange research at Nomura in New York. “The institutional framework is being questioned, the credibility of the ECB is being questioned, and all that uncertainty is really fueling an asset allocation shift away from the euro zone.”
“Both the dollar and the euro have structural debt problems but at least Europe is doing something about it,” said David Bloom, global head of currency strategy at HSBC Holdings Plc in London. “The pendulum will swing against the dollar later this year as people realize that the U.S. has even bigger problems than the E.U.”
‘No Good Currency Choice Except Gold
It’s hard to have a real love affair with dollars, especially at this level. However, it is harder (for the time being) to have a love affair with the Euro.
With property bubbles in Canada, Australia, and China it sure is hard to like the Loonie, the Australian dollar, or the Renminbi (Yuan).
The essence of the matter is there is really nowhere to hide, except gold.’
Yves, with your indulgence I’m taking the liberty to post this off topic link here and may bring it to the attention of Corrente. A friend asked me to foward this to my English reading friends. I doubt if any of my friends will be interested in reading this whole thing. But if you want to know what’s happening in Thailand this should give you some background.
The King Never Smile (e-book)
http://www.mediafire.com/?imr2iz1u1zu
MarcoPolo, thanks for the link!
Fascinating and informative read in just the mildly lengthy introduction — which is as far as I have got — as it is a concise abstract of the behind the scenes methodology (read ‘conspiracy’ for the anti-conspiracy nuts) used to control the Thai people. Worth a read by all just for the examination of the similarities of methodology of political control.
I will finish it with more time as it is not only interesting but well written.
Shame it is in that hideous pdf format. Should be on a more easily accessed conventional web site and formatted in readable chunks.
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
Re Obamacare fallout, I had a talk with my best friend this week. A public employee. He talked to me about a lot of the changes in his cafeteria expense account that his superiors told him were the result of Obamacare changes. He is a very unhappy man, as many expenses that were covered under cafeteria will not be any longer, unless he gets a doctors Rx, which of course is a $20 co-pay for a docs visit, and would negate a lot of the savings.
I will investigate whether this is really due to Obamacare or whether the city is changing policies and blaming it on Obamacare. The point is the PERCEPTION that still-rising costs and more restrictive regs will cast solid doubts on Democrats’ claims that Obamacare would improve things for most people.
Pelosi: “A cap on your costs, but no cap on your benefit.” Yeah, right. In the words of a great American legal mind, don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.
Not even a single story about the Israeli attack on the flotilla? Feeling a little sympathetic for the home country, Madam Webber?
Or maybe you’re readying another post about the Catholic Church?
There is a certain category of person, and it makes no difference they are in the majority, who feel illicit blowjobs are worse than decades long emotional, nutritional, and psychological abuse. For example, the Residential school system in Canada was hardly a story until it was transformed into a story of sexual abuse. Cultural abuse, economic abuse, even biological warfare are things of the history books. But sexual abuse? My god, SEXUAL ABUSE? Please, let’s have a rampage. Sexual abuse always means a cash payout. Neglect and humiliation and loss of a langauge –well, that’s a bit more fuzzy in the minds of the masses, ain’t it?
So it is with you Madam Webber. Gaza is a non-story, a non-abuse. Until the Israeli’s start having sex with the boys they scoop up off the street, it will make no difference to you.
If so, then here is the story for you.
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2010/05/30/children-behind-israeli-bars
“Israeli forces arrest approximately 700 Palestinian minors every year. During interrogation, these minors are not allowed to have contact with their lawyers or families. Human rights organisations say the alleged abuses happen during this period of isolation.”
“These practices are meant to break the children. In a way, when you break the spirit of these children, you’re breaking the spirit of the nation,” Rifaat Kassis, the director general of DCI, told me.
“And it’s because of the powerful impact sexual abuse has on these children that DCI has sounded the alarm at the highest possible international levels. The organisation has communicated affidavits to the Special UN Rapporteur on Torture, hoping to galvanise enough international pressure to bring these abuses to an end.”
Israel is like the Catholic Church, Madam Webber. They’re institutional child molesters. The children, Madam Webber! The Children!
http://www.dci-pal.org/english/display.cfm?DocId=1476&CategoryId=1
“Not even a single story about the Israeli attack on the flotilla? Feeling a little sympathetic for the home country, Madam Webber?”
D’oh!
I suggest you learn to read. See the post and the thread above. I’ve had links critical of Israel’s conduct towards Gaza, long before this incident brought it to the attention of most Americans.
And I suggest you check out the ethnicity that goes with “Webber”. Hint: it isn’t a Jewish name. And home country? Guess what, it’s America. One side of my family (the lineage of all four of my father’s grandparents) has been here since 1620. The other side was here before the American Revolution. Your remark is bigoted, ignorant, and counterfactual.
Re the Obamacare, Washington Examiner, references from Politico and Rasmussen, lauding Peter J. Hansen (no idea who he is except that he writes for the Weekly Standard), this is a conservative, pro-business criticism of Obamacare. It has none of the standard points made by the left: no universal single payer, not even a public option, the individual mandate, the sweetheart deals with the insurance, pharma, and medical industries, and the slashing of Medicare. Like most criticisms from the right, it conflates a general across the board dissatisfaction of Obamacare with its own conservative agenda.
Healthcare is not going to determine the November election. Rather it is just one more instance of where the Obama and the Democrats failed to deliver. The BP oil spill will be more important. Jobs and the economy will be far more important still. Indeed the Democrats are looking at disaster in November on the issues. The only silver lining for them is the generaly greater dreadfulness of the Republicans running against them. As someone who believes in solutions that will work, I think we are screwed no matter which party wins in November.
While I am no fan of Obamacare [as it has come to be called], I must agree w/ Hugh on the cognitive bias at work in this article.
That’s why I called reader attention to the poll results. The preamble was over the top.
for Henry
Patience
That reverse looking glass has created a solvency trap on one side and a liquidity trap on the other, with a growing gap between the double-sided mirror, backing government and corporation around the circle to a common point. It’s like a piston coming down and the floor of the chamber coming up. And because the efficient global economy is destroying planetary diversity, the relativity circuit of energy dissipation is becoming more efficient, causing pressure in the planetary core to increase, and the sun to load up on the margin, while cookie-cutter development is reducing surface diversity, increasingly exposing it to concentrating weather patterns, which exist in the gap, creating the spark plug.
The people that were bred to build that machine are inside the chamber. Take a look at the graph of employment by sector and you will see their ongoing relationships. Take a look at the global artificial demographic acceleration curve, and you will see the pressure. Take a look at California’s budgets, demographic induction, and IRS sector taxation to see the loop; and shift financial outcomes with a reverse accounting sink to dial in the relationship, to see how the prototype was built.
The breeders that supervised the construction are also in the chamber, because the Internet has eliminated all the hiding places. Whether the Internet is shut down tomorrow or not is irrelevant, because the chain reaction has already begun. They are all in the chamber, and the global, computer-driven, banking and credit, human resource system, which promotes short-term revenue in exchange for long-term debt, to lock all the gears in place, has bred those behaviors into participating populations, eliminating all the exits. Short of releasing all the internal bonds, which are ensured by the hidden too-big-to-fail derivatives market (MAD – mutually assured destruction), bred behavior cannot be changed in real time, leaving the proprietors to face an increasingly angry mob.
The pressure the cartels are facing in the financial vice tells you that they have already sped past their last exit, the chain reaction has begun, and the cartel system is imploding, into a financial black hole. Playing both sides against the middle, divide and conquer politics, is a double-edged sword, in more than one dimension.
Naturally, like any filtered gas under pressure, the proprietors are spreading the pressure across the chamber, by moving the debt around, through the central banks, so one pocket of gas does not ignite a chain reaction, extending and pretending, as long as possible. Whether by pressure alone, operator error, or environmental ignition, it’s going to blow. What happens to everyone depends on their psychology, whether and how they choose to employ that energy, the decisions in the moment when the bonds are broken.
A handful of people, filling in boxes on a computer, cannot make decision for everyone. Jefferson thought it would take 1000 years to fully saturate the land available at the time of the constitution’s origin. 7 billion people, connected across global communication systems, was not predictable by the geopolitical cartels of the time, and the modern cartel system isn’t any smarter; it’s still breeding ignorance as the means to power.
Do not mistake patience for appeasement on the part of labor. Its operations extend far beyond the knowledge of gravity, and the rules of engagement (the laws of physics), are the rules of engagement. Check your history, the cartels look in the mirror, and see themselves on both sides, first in one and then in the other, assuming that they are the universe, and nothing exists beyond their scope.
Labor has no stake in right or wrong, good or bad, winning or losing. That’s the dc circuit, in which gravity “educates” its 1s to want to be 0s, and its 0s to want to be 1s. From the perspective of labor, gravity is gravity, of which there is no shortage, and the relative difference between 1s and 0s is negligible. The algebraic reduction of gravity nets everything away, except individual talent, and that is only important to the extent it is put to work, how it assembles into analog waves, to balance gravitational fields.
OK, so, it comes down to this: how do you install multiple rotors into a single stator, and why would you want to do that? Answer those questions and the financial symptoms go away. Agency is about to feel the implosion of its leverage again. Once an empire is de-energized, it takes a while to bleed the capacitors into the chamber, with oxygen. From the perspective of the planet, which registers activity on its fulcrum, it all happens in the blink of an eye, and the signal is transmitted much faster than the speed of light, across the fulcrum of fulcrums, to the universe. Gravity has no patience for relativity, which is why it assumes incorrectly every time, shorting its own circuit.
Surfing the web was the analogy chosen for a reason.
What you want to see in equilibrium is the corporations competing, and individuals cooperating in teams. As agency attempts to identify specific productivity among individuals for discount delivery of multiplier effects into the commoditized corporate market, to justify its own existence as a separate body, labor starts migrating out on the other side of the fulcrum, and gravity chases it, creating the black hole, of corporate-government devolution into a symbiotic nexus. It’s not good or bad; it just is. Once they hit the brick wall, we’ll talk about virtual global organization some more, and turn that torque to the new load.
as others have noted, an economic revolution is required, to produce a quantum increase in private sector economic growth, and an associated, relative decline in agency, to effectively put that energy to work, else global financial armageddon.
where do they suppose that is going to come from?
the difference between a black hole, a big bang, and a sun is the symbiotic relativity circuit, the web.
oil is looking more and more like the horse and buggy everyday, it has systematically eliminated alternative development, and time is running out.
If you see a symptom in one circuit, you are going to see its translation in another.
Only one bee hive with and with out the phone? Sample size is way too small!
Not at all convincing.
Some beehives with CCD are very isolated from cell phone activity. The journal they published in and the language they use sounds suspect. “electro magnetic smog”? There could be many many reasons that one hive did better than the other.
What happend to the Israeli/Australian/Chinese bee virus hypothesis? Is it still being looked into?
itad? says:
Thanks, you covered the problem really well.
Thanks for linking to Chris Floyd, he always has something interesting to say like all the others that are linked to or comment here.