Lambert Strether (Yves being on vacation).
Millennia-old Microbes Found Alive in Deep Ocean Muck Scientific American
Facebook IPO huge but no pop San Jose Mercury News
Much ado about nothing Felix Salmon
Morgan Stanley made big bet on Facebook Reuters
NIFA rejects Nassau, Morgan Stanley privatized sewers deal Long Island Business News (MS).
JPMorgan returns $168m to MF trustee FT. Some of the customer money is still missing.
How JPMorgan Is Like Enron Bloomberg, J.P. Morgan’s RiskMetrics™.
Geithner to Dimon: Resign From The Board Of the New York Fed Baseline Scenario (translating)
Greece Must Exit Nouriel Roubini
Canadian oil sands flyover slide show Business Insider (Aquifer)
Union’s pension plan targeted for criminal probe McClatchy. International Brotherhood of Boilermakers. Small fry, at best.
More Americans clocking in during their golden years MSNBC
Test All Baby Boomers for Hepatitis C, CDC Urges Bloomberg (SW)
How Exercise Affects the Brain: Age and Genetics Play a Role Science Daily
Gallup survey finds support in Egypt for Muslim Brotherhood dropping as presidential vote nears McClatchy
Hopes fading for swift U.S., Pakistan deal on Afghan supply routes Reuters
Afghanistan: Bringing it all back home FT
New opium production bodes ill for Afghan security McClatchy
Cell Doors ‘Incapable of Locking’ at Giant Afghan Jail Wired
Joint Forces Staff College Class Suspended After Teaching America’s Enemy Is Islam HuffPo. Precious bodily fluids.
Teaching ‘total war against Islam’ Business Recorder. How it played in Pakistan.
Blogger Shines Light on U.S. Shadow War in East Africa Wired
Journalist, Plaintiff Chris Hedges Hails “Monumental” Ruling Blocking NDAA Indefinite Detention Democracy Now
House rejects Adam Smith’s ban on indefinite detention on U.S. soil Seattle Times
Payrolls Increase in 32 States, Led by Indiana and Texas Bloomberg
“Driven and motivated” (Atrios)
60K Expected At Sold-Out Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Rally Against Internet’s Evils Sunday Gothamist
Wireless Emergency Alerts coming soon to your phone (Furzy Mouse)
Japan seeks 15 pct summer power savings in west Reuters
Raised garden beds: hugelkultur instead of irrigation. I might try this.
* * *
D – 112 and counting. *
At the stroke of midnight in Washington, a drooling red-eyed beast with the legs of a man and a head of a giant hyena crawls out of its bedroom window in the South Wing of the White House and leaps fifty feet down to the lawn…pauses briefly to strangle the Chow watchdog, then races off into the darkness… –Hunter Thompson
Occupy. 400 detained at Frankfurt Occupy protest. Montreal outlaws masks, scarfs, hoods during public demonstrations “without a valid excuse.” Quebec National Assembly passes Bill 78, compared to War Measures Act. Section 16: Police to be told eight hours in advance of any demonstration of more than 10 people (possibly now 25). Gatineau Chamber of Commerce announces upcoming “assembly of more than 10 people,” asks police how many officers will be present so enough hors d’oeuvres may be prepared. Summer vacation brought forward at universities. A helpful guide to knowing if you’re in a riot. A more jaundiced view.
G8 Summit. Frederick County closed public schools Friday, police felt obligated to “prepare for the worst,” but only about 50 Occupy movement participants showed at a “People’s Summit” held in a library in advance of G8 (picture). Bucolic!
NATO summit. They’ve got drones. (But who, exactly?) They’ve got boats with machine guns (picture). CPD Superintendent Garry McCarthy on agent provocateurs: “What?” (video). Nice get! Bridgeport raid: 4 of 9 released uncharged. “Witnesses described police officers dressed all in black armed with battering rams and guns drawn swarming into the building, conducting warrantless searches and refusing to tell them what was going on.” Vigil outside the jail (picture). NLG lawyer: “We were met with silence. No, we don’t have anyone in custody, no we can’t confirm three was a raid.'”
“We are yet to see the ‘up to 10,000’ protesters that some have predicted for Sunday. Still, 48 hours is a long time in anti-war protesting…” National Nurses United march: “I’ve been nursing over 30 years, and I’ve never seen the country this bad. The movement is definitely building up steam. We are fired up [hmmm], and we are going to take this country back from Wall Street. We want our money back.” “Breakaway” protesters start marching and chanting spontaneously (!). But: “It became less about environmentalism and more about taking the streets. That is important, but I just like a more succinct message.” Sunday’s main anti-war event may lack NNU members. “I’m focussed on the healthcare issues. Besides, we’re flying back home.”
FL (Swing State). FL Rs at it again, purging voter rolls with bad data.
IA (Swing State). All three IA House Ds on record supporting some form of constitutional amendment to require a balanced federal budget [pounds head on desk].
OH (Swing state). R Party Chairman (Portage County) drops dime to FBI on R Gov Kasich offer of “influence.” Group looks to block fracking in Shalersville (DanPS).
NC (Swing state). Fracking bill advances in N.C. legislature. Nice fracking graphic.
PA (Swing State). Iffy job stats in PA. Construction down in the summer?!
TX. The foodie caucus.
WI (swing state). Walker holds out hope for iron mine. Yay, extraction! How the Ds are blowing the narrative on jobs by lazy thinking about the data. Will Ilya Sheyman please pick up the white courtesy phone?
Inside Baseball. Howie Kurtz fluffs Rahm. “Obama ground forces braced for air war” (FT). Air war being ads on the air, ground war being face-to-face GOTV (Get Out The Vote). Ricketts/Wright wrap-up: “An entrepreneurial venture, not a strategic one.” $700K for a few days work, not a bad deal! And who leaked to the Times? The story says a rival R, but both kids had motive. Banking sector puts its money on Mitt Romney (see under the Ratchett Effect). Panel at Harvard’s Institute of Politics on 2012 election (video). Worth a listen for the talking points, as long as you don’t believe a word anyone says (except for reporter Lynn Sweet, who’s old school). Sweet describes Obama HQ, “a big student union” with hundreds of staffers for months, and Romney HQ, where the electricians are still pulling wire through the walls. Nevertheless, national polls show statistical dead heat. Both seek to raise $750 million for their respective campaigns and parties. (A billion here, a billion there…) Charlie Cook on polls, pollsters, and polling. “Not all opinions are created equal.”
Romney. Romney Steel Dynamic take-down. “It’s the economy, stupid!”
Feeding frenzies. It’s quiet. Too quiet.
* 112 days ’til the Democratic National Convention ends with a torchlight parade on the floor Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte, NC. Fire exists the first in light, A simile that has been absorbed into the forms of our language produces a false appearance, and this disquiets us. “But this isn’t how it is!” — we say. “Yet this is how it has to be!”
* * *
Antidote du jour (hat tip, friend of Aquifer):
62 comments
Comments are closed.
Greece Must Exit Nouriel Roubini
I think Roubini is on the right track here and the ECB should be concentrating on the fallout of Greece leaving the Euro rather than trying to dictate Greece fiscal policy (Ex-ECB Chief Trichet Unveils Bold Plan to Save Euro, 5/17/12, http://www.cnbc.com/id/47471171/comid/3#comments_top)
But I think he puts too much emphasis on taxpayers being on the hook for recapitalization rather than the parties that took on these high interest loans hoping they would be backed by taxpayers in the end
“European taxpayers would effectively take over the Greek banking system, but this would be partial compensation for the losses imposed on creditors by drachmatization.”
More important I think would be to simultaneously put JP Morgan for starters into FDIC receivership and force its fraudulent accounting and trading practices into the open to get at more of the root of the problems..
Once you give a government the power to lock up terrorists indefinitly, there is an incentive for them to declare political opponents to be terrorists. I don’t think that we’re on the verge of becoming an authoritarian regime, but we’ve taken another step on that journey.
So, you’re an optimist…
What do you think about the fact that students who attend General Stanley McChrystal’s “leadership” seminars at Yale being required to sign “confidentiality agreements”? Authoritarian enough for you?
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/what-mcchrystals-yale-perch-really-means/?print=1
http://antiwar.com/radio/2012/05/18/kelley-b-vlahos-21/
Yale is recruiting ground.
“an emergent mission to “militarize” higher education? ” See above.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/what-mcchrystals-yale-perch-really-means/?print=1
Dear Jim;
It’s like that ancient Chineese proverb: “A jail of a thousand cells begins to be filled with one protester.”
I remember reading a memoir about the Spanish Civil War of the 1930’s. Todays America isn’t Spain of the Thirties, granted. But the dynamics are all there for a new version of that ‘same old story’ to play out here. Human nature doesn’t change, only the tools used to effect its’ disasterous decisions.
wiki:
The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world (743 per 100,000 population), Russia has the second highest rate (577 per 100,000), followed by Rwanda (561 per 100,000).
Jail is this year’s black.
WhIch means:
(1) Americans are exceedingly bad, or,
(2) their government is exceedingly bad
I’m going with (2). Just a hunch.
House rejects Adam Smith’s ban on indefinite detention on U.S. soil
and military custody and trial.
That’s a military coup, folks. Homeland Security, Fema camps, 30,000 domestic drones approved —
Dear LeeAnne;
The Rightists had better watch their ‘captured’ Tea Party Movement very closely this summer. These kinds of populist movements can get out of control quickly. Especially if some pesky Left leaning agitators get involved at the ‘grass roots.’ The people in these Tea Party groups are indeed ‘mad as H—.’ When they finally realize that they have been duped, let someone have a feasable alternative ready for them to focus their anger on. Then it’s off to the races.
I’m not so sure. If you’ve ever had to deal with a real teabagger, they are impervious to reality. That Canadian researcher who wrote about the authoritarian personality is spot on.
I have a family member who should know better, but who is eager to sip at the bitter and psychotic fount of Michelle Malkin, Michael Savage, and Andrew Breitbart, and who has recently signed on (after being educated at Mt. Holyoke and Wesleyan) to a Rapture-Ready®™ church.
There is a severe personality disorder involved, imo.
There are people whose indole is that of just wanting to be followers: they don’t want to do the heavy lifting of thinking for themselves. When we say “drink the Kool-Aid”, it’s generally a joke, but real people did die drinking real poisoned Kool-Aid.
Dear Lidia;
You have my sympathy in your dealings with the aforesaid family member. One of our daughters has married into, and embraced, an old line Fundamentalist sect. She did quite well making her own decisions for several years. Now she imbibes at the font of Calvin, Huss and Zwingli. I haven’t read the Canadian researcher very deeply, I come from the Erich Fromm and his contemporaries school. Those folks drew from the Hitler and Stalin schools of furherprinzip. We’re not quite there yet, but the trends are there to see or not see, as your internal view of reality dictates. Our experience with our daughter has taught us the lesson of the futility of expectations. I hope that the Rightists also learn this lesson.
Petreaus head of the CIA … an army General with no qualifications other than loyalty to the status quo.
anyone care to add more dots -do we need any more?
“Hey kids! Hows about a vacation trip this year!? Anacostia Flats, here we come!”
Anyone else remember MoveOn rallying the D party troops with a fundraiser for the NYT full page Betrayus advertisement in the Bush years? Now, does anyone remember MoveOn saying a word in protest as their O-man/D-party promoted him twice?
Anyone here remember when America was just a mildly corrupt Federal Republic? I think I’m going to rewatch “I Claudius” and concentrate on the political plot line this time.
Yes, I remember well that mildly corrupted republic you speak of. It was 1845, it was just a year before the invasion of Mexico, and I was just a young lad of ten.
Ah, those were the days!
The tar sands piece – the photos belie the hagiography of the writing. One company was fined $275,000 for polluting the Athabasca River – roughly the cost of 6 tires for their humongous dump trucks …
I understand these operations can clearly be seen from space …
Those pictures are fascinating! Thanks.
What is disturbing to me is the damage being done simply to get hydrocarbons since hydrogen can be obtained from water and carbon from the air.
But we need time (and peace) to develop the technologies so we must continue to muddle through till then.
We have the technology – just not the political will to implement it …
PS – must have been a typo – wasn’t me who submitted that piece …
We have the technology – just not the political will to implement it … Aquifer
The problem is that it does not make economic sense yet. If it did, then even the oil companies would be investing in it.
One should be leery of “political will”. Many leaders have had strong wills and have wrecked their countries with it.
Where there is no guidance the people fall, But in abundance of counselors there is victory. Proverbs 11:14
‘We have the technology – just not the political will to implement it …’
Wind is a boondoggle, though the Germans are welcome to prove me wrong.
Solar/PV may scale and be economically efficient someday — maybe even in the next decade — but it isn’t there yet.
So the only non-carbon-releasing energy technology that we actually _have_ as a working proposition at this time is nuclear.
“Economic sense” hmmmm – nuclear NEVER made “economic sense”. Private industry wouldn’t fund it without a whole lot of gov’t subsidies and insurance companies would never insure it. Ask Chernobyl and Japan how much economic sense it makes.
As for the other non fossil fuel sources – just how much “economic sense” does it make to wreck the climate? China is making a boodle off selling solar – to us. No – end all the subsidies to fossil fuels and nukes, start taxing carbon to balance out the externalities that industry is imposing and subsidize non fossil fuel sources as we do the others – and we can make it make “economic sense” lickety split …. If we don’t, MN will do it for us …
No – end all the subsidies to fossil fuels and nukes, Aquifer
Agree. Subsidies are fascist and do not make economic sense.
start taxing carbon to balance out the externalities that industry is imposing Aquifer
Disagree. The science is NOT settled wrt CO2 and the Precautionary Principle does not apply since fossil fuel use is a huge part of a very vulnerable economy.
and subsidize non fossil fuel sources as we do the others – Aquifer
The government should certainly fund energy research and finance prototypes but subsidies are fascist.
and we can make it make “economic sense” lickety split Aquifer
Only artificially and by driving up the cost of living:
Electricity bills set to rise to pay for wind farm subsidies
…. If we don’t, MN will do it for us … Aquifer
MN is surprisingly unpredictable. CO2 maybe keeping us out of an Ice Age which would be far more destructive than global warming.
I advise patience and prudence. One day solar power will make economic sense since MN uses it herself. As for windmills, I have my doubts about them.
Fascinating?!? Perhaps, but only in a most disgusting and disturbing way. Furthermore, reading the 2 articles re: “the war on Islam” (in general), it appears we no longer have any “time” nor shall we ever again have any “peace.” Sit back, enjoy the show, one unlike any other in all history and pretty much everyone on the planet has a front-row seat.
There’s always hope even at the 11th hour.
But it is a fascinating show, I agree.
F.B., there is no hope (except in your fantasy-other-world, of course).
I “enjoyed” reading “Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations” and came across an older, related work for free online: “The Final Empire”. http://www.rainbowbody.net/Finalempire/FEchap1.htm
Human civilization has been, in all forms up to this point, destructive to the planet which is our home. There’s only so much that you can piss in the planters and barf in the toilets before the adults require that you clean up the place.
Ignorance of the soil as the genesis of all life worth having/living has led us to abuse it woefully.
there is no hope (except in your fantasy-other-world, of course). Lidia
Christ and worthy believers of His will reign for 1000 years on THIS Earth and the population explosion will be HUGE to make the point, I guess, that it was not about lack of real resources but about lack of ethics.
Even now, the world’s population is greater than many have ever thought it could be.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
The population explosion WILL be huge, because of all the nutty religionists out there trying to out-breed each other. Then there will be a huge starvation and die-off.
The ecosystem cannot sustain 2 billion people, much less 7, 8, or 9. EVERYWHERE AROUND YOU the devastation is visible, if you would only look up from your asinine scriptures.
“Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”
The ecosystem cannot sustain 2 billion people, much less 7, 8, or 9. Lidia
How do you propose to reduce that number without trampling on peoples’ rights?
“I understand these operations can clearly be seen from space …”
With the naked eye? Not sure about that. But certainly modern satellites can watch the action from just about any distance they choose, including right up close.
Here is an interesting mid-space photo essay of a black sands operation from an old Landsat satellite, taken over a span of 27 years.
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Photos+Athabasca+sands+from+space+1984+present/5790492/story.html
It looks like “the thing” doubled in size between 1999 and 2008, and “the thing” is looking like it wants to double in size again in less than five years.
This fits in with my 3 year old prediction, that Alberta oil sands production will double in size at least four times by the year 2020.
It’s gone exponential, in other words, and given the current/future state of stagnant/declining crude oil production, it should mean the world’s number one per capita polluter, Canada, will also hold the distinction of being the most important oil exporting country ever, by no later than the year 2022.
And Quebec joins the Fascist Parade:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/may2012/queb-m19.shtml
Quebec law criminalizing student strike threatens basic rights of all
“Bill 78 contains a series of coercive measures specifically directed against teachers and other university and CEGEP employees and their unions, so as to prevent them from taking any action in support of the striking students.
“In the case of a leader, representative, or spokesman for a student association the minimum fine is $7,000 and the maximum $35,000 per day.”
Re: union pension plan investigation
Yves, why is this not done at more places? I see this all the time. A person gets a job for a school/govt/company and he uses his influence to get his wife and kids and in laws jobs there too. It’s especially bad in the school systems. The person hired as a principal then hires his wife at a handsome salary to be his secretary. Then he sees that his daughter gets hired as a teacher. Or, the principal’s accountant’s daughter just graduated and needs a job so the principal pulls some strings and the daughter gets hired.
I am on a rant about this Yves because I think that this sort of favoritism has risen significantly since the start of the current recession, since there is a shortage of jobs. And this is not something that affects college grads differently than high school grads. With a shortage of jobs, I think potential employers even hold back hiring knowing that ‘a local sports coach’s son is graduating from college soon with an accounting degree’ and it would be a way for the “job creator” to do a favor for the coach so that the “job creator’s” child could possibly get a starting position on the soccer team. And the hard working grad without connections sure may find employment, but it may involve him taking a little less pay or even moving far from the rest of his family. And the coach’s daughter, well, we can give her another dollar or two an hour because we need to suck up to him to help us out.
I don’t know what Yves would have to say, but to me this just seems like a reversal to an historical feudal/tribal norm.
I do worry that “democracy” along with other socially-liberal notions such as meritocracy or the rights of women and racial/ethnic minorities may be fruiting bodies of an excess of extracted energy.
As energy becomes dearer, I fear our social structures shall become tighter and more regressive.
re The biology of banking:
That’s what this guy talks about too:
Bernard A. Lietaer on Monetary blind spots and structural solutions 1v5
Banking is a big fail for so many different reasons from ethics to biology. I can’t think of a bigger threat to mankind.
I love the picture of Hollande and Obama “buttoning up” …
Is this before or after they have “exposed” themselves?
Maybe that’s why Obama “changed his mind” on gay marriage – he decided Hollande was his kind of guy …
There’s some weird concerted effort in the past week or so to paint Obama as a homosexual.
I tend to chalk it up to the usual Republican projection. Romney’s gang aggression, at 18, upon a younger, weaker kid with a bleached shock of hair, along with his other harrassments of gays or men perceived to be effeminate, vividly telegraphs that candidate’s own sexual insecurity.
My cube mate used to say he was a male lesbian.
Good grief, have you no sense of humor – did you see the picture?
Sorry, I wasn’t responding directly to that. It just reminded me of what I had seen going around…
re “Driven and motivated”:
Sad!
And why? Because of a mere shortage or lack of circulation of money relative to debt in the economy? Something has to change. Either the debt needs to be reduced or the money to pay it with increased. Needless austerity is going to cause trouble.
We should have been out of Afghanistan by mid-2002. Instead Obama is angling to stay there until 2024. We continue to support a corrupt, ineffective, unpopular government. Pakistan our ostensible “ally” has got to be in the running for most duplicitous partner on the planet. We need to get out now and put the responsibility on Pakistan (which has been trying to pull the strings in Afghanistan throughout) to guarantee Afghanistan’s stability and that it not become a springboard for attacks against us. They wanted the role. Let them live with the consequences.
We have no policy reason to be in Afghanistan. We have no policy reason to support Pakistan. It should be clear to everyone by now that there is no Afghanistan strategy and our tactics suck. I can not think of a bigger fail. Policy: F, Strategy: F, Tactics: F. And all of this at ten plus years and counting.
Re. Afghanistan, strategy rating of F and no reason to be there are correct judgements.
Re. Pakistan, you want all the strategic purchase you can get when you’re dealing with a failed state with the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world. So, unfortunately, we have ample reason to support them.
The whole thing is about a pipeline. I’ve been seeing fragmentary mentions of this for years — at least back to 2002. Sorry, I haven’t trcked down details and don’t have any links; I did a little Googling over the years but just accept the tale as being plausible, since no other reason for staying makes any sense to me. Partly it’s to deny minerals to China, partly it’s to transport natural gas out of the ‘stans without using the Russian pipelines. I think if anyone was interested you could find a lot more. Maybe it’s just a conspiracy theory, but I’m sure there’s SOME reason why the insanity continues.
Dear Procopius;
My nomination is: Bureaucratic Inertia.
http://baselinescenario.com/2012/05/17/geithner-to-dimon-resign-from-the-board-of-the-new-york-fed/
“Who will prove more powerful, Jamie Dimon or Tim Geithner? ”
Too suggestive of a strawman, link struck down.
GEITHNER: .. it is very important .. that our system of oversight [regulators] and safeguards and the enforcement authorities have not just the resources they need, but they are perceived to be above any political influence ..
Let’s see, a head of a large bank AND a regulator ? Geithner has already identified it as a strawman. Geithner does not “perceive” them as above.
http://www.businessinsider.com/canadian-oil-sands-flyover-2012-5
“.. about 2.5 tons of sand to produce one barrel of oil. ”
Joules expended thru final product ?
How many joules in a barrel of oil? 6.1 GJ
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_joules_in_a_barrel_of_oil
From Wiki: “Approximately 1.0–1.25 gigajoules (280–350 kWh) of energy is needed to extract a barrel of bitumen and upgrade it to synthetic crude. As of 2006, most of this is produced by burning natural gas.[91] Since a barrel of oil equivalent is about 6.117 gigajoules (1,699 kWh), its EROEI is 5–6. That means this extracts about 5 or 6 times as much energy as is consumed. Energy efficiency is expected to improve to average of 900 cubic feet (25 m3) of natural gas or 0.945 gigajoules (263 kWh) of energy per barrel by 2015, giving an EROEI of about 6.5.[92]”
This compares with an EROEI for conventional (1970s) oil of about 30.
“US Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk ”
That’s like Skullf#*k U., right ? Cluster U. ?
http://www.brecorder.com/articles-a-letters/187/1190696/
categorized under ‘Unusual Price of Admission’
Interestingly, that’s illegal war propaganda under CCPR Article 20, supreme law of the land. The US tried to legalize war propaganda for all nations when it signed the CCPR, so our scumbag American statesmen could keep that kind of genocidal hate speech coming. That means, under the US reservation to the CCPR, it would be A-OK when Iran said we should wipe Israel off the map (except Iran never said that, it was just another Zionazi lie.)
And holy crap! A mealy-mouthed hint from the lickspittle press that the US should join the Rome Statute, because backing up the rotten US judiciary with international accountability is the only way this country will ever get the pink mist industry under control.
http://blogs.reuters.com/david-rohde/2012/05/18/ending-natos-double-standard/
!s
Circumvention of oversight, subversion of oversight — do you think they teach that at the college, too ?
Operating with a kind of modular brain system, one face for this group, quite another for the possiblity of oversight, approved and monitored by their superiors. A slow motion coup that occasionally speeds up.
I’m pretty sure evading oversight is taught “on the job.” A lot of an officer’s training is socialization, and oral transmission. A big part of an NCO’s job is to teach young officers how to get the daily work done and take care of their troops properly, but the higher ranks use things like mandatory attendance at officers’ club activities, like “dining in,” to extablish cultural norms. It’ll be interesting to see if this LTC Dooley gets his bird (is promoted to full colonel, for you civilians) or not. I seem to recall that “Gerry” Boykin was a brigadier general when he got called out for wearing his uniform while giving a speech at some conservative venue calling for a full crusade against the Muslim devils, and he ended up retiring as a lieutenant general, so people in the chain of command above him must have approved of his deranged oratory. To me this is bad, bad news.
“On the job” oversight evasion is doubtless THE prereq for the college.
Concerning the pre-emptive strike by the US-UK led
coalition in Iraq, started in 2003, I seem to remember
reading that a Law Lord (Tony Blair counsel) gave
a legal opinion tipping the balance towards this
unilateral action being illegal in/for the UK.
If we set aside any moral qualms temporarily,
I’m curious about how straightforward that
particular argued opinion was (in UK law).
Maybe someday we’ll learn how this “issue”
came to be side-stepped or what
“work-around” solution was found in the
Blair Government.
Robama and his minions polishing their act for a hot summer…look for this sort of shite coming down fast and hard:
Entrapment by planted informant is now the go-to mode of generating “terrorist acts”, and the Rombama DoJ will be doubling down between now and the November elections in order to discredit and villify protests of all sorts by throwing the “anti-terror” playbook at people. It’s all but a police-state by name now, folks. What Cheney-Bush began, Rombama has taken to maximum levels, and it’s abetted by a right-wing Congress who can never say no to totalitarian acts. What a bloody shower.
Timothy McVie, these guys are not.
Disappearance is a per se breach of the Convention Against Torture, so let’s hope the lawyers of the Bridgeport disappeared file charges under the Federal Torture Statutes (which illegally fail to provide US citizens with the protections of the CAT) and then, when the charges are dismissed, submit complaints to the Human Rights Council – if possible, before the Committee Against Torture concludes its review.
Player Meet Dog
There is the explicit economy and there is the implicit economy, the derivative and the integral, and then there is God. Teenagers “think” that the world is what THEY see, which is just the tip of a growing iceberg, and prove themselves wrong both ways by assuming that others cannot see what they are doing.
The explicit programmers, the legislators and the software engineers, are like teenagers, busy inserting their arbitrary code in the DNA’s derivative, already on its way back to the churn pool. Attempting to rule out the unknown is insane, because the only way to do so is to make your world so small that you rule yourself out, in time, which is exactly what they have done.
To make a very long story short, currency is a DERIVATIVE, of pricks and vaginas in DC, which are now DERIVATIVE of intellects in Silicon Valley, which are themselves DERIVATIVE, relative to time, which is exactly what the relatively impotent legacy corporate families across the pond wanted. Misery loves company, all going THE WRONG F-ING WAY. F-Heads. How’s that for logic and emotion?
Just a ray of f-ing sunshine.
You live in God’s world, whether you like it or not. There is no plan; there are an infinite number of plans. The way to deal with teenagers is not to deal with them. You cannot own children; you are not their boss. Your job as an integral parent is to treat them as an individual, as an example of expectation. They need you on the front end, but you will need them on the back end, as the pensioners who borrowed against the future of other people’s kids are learning now, again.
Set limits on your children as you would have limits set upon yourself, because that is exactly what is going to happen when the poles reverse. If you need help, ask your grandchildren. You have to be smarter than the computer, which is always on its way to the trash HEAP. Have children to have children in God’s time, not yours.
Domesticated critters are notoriously ineffective breeders, in terms of both choosing an appropriate mate and timing childbirth. Investing is not rocket science. Look at the data across an entire empire cycle. They breed on slavery, in a positive feedback loop, while their masters issue just as much as they will take, monetary debt in the case of humans, willing to hold it against each other’s future.
But go right ahead if you like and collect all the money and associated toys you want, and, by all means, don’t share. Only a city cop is stupid enough to create criminals to the end of collecting a pension. Don’t borrow and bet against your children’s future and expect to see the future.
Hierarchy is a self-fulfilling prophesy, projected by fear, but the bullies running it cancel each other out. On the empire side, life begets death and its denizens are the walking dead. Keep your distance, in plain sight. Old dogs do learn, despite the mythology designed to the contrary. Discrimination, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
Money is a derivative of time, not the other way around. Spend your time propitiously and the money will take care of itself, regardless of the façade spinning its web around you.
The new economy is always built in plain sight of the old economy. To see it, filter out the noise projected by the old economy, its income facades. Only an empire robot concerns itself with your explicit job, to place you in the empire hierarchy, to step on you or pull you down accordingly. If you do not reciprocate, it will step into the abyss and pull the entire weight of the empire down upon itself.
Go ahead; lay off that out-dated old man to cut costs, after raising prices, to insert taxes. The “thought leaders” are down $17T on $600T derivative. When do you suppose they are going to put down the Ready-Shovel? The economy doesn’t work the way they think it does by design.
What do you do when the common law judges turn marriage into Russian Roulette with all the chambers full? Relay the firing pin to MAD-Derivative.
If someone whispers in your ear, telling you that the elevator man is having a double with breakfast, tell him/her to mind his/her own business, or just keep doing the same, politically correct, but when war approaches, and it always does, who do you think is carrying Trump, up to the Tower?
So, the kid surgeons, physicists, computer scientists, economists, whatever, get out of class and walk right on by the cantankerous old elevator man everyday, up and down the stairs, following their fat pontiff leaders, but occasionally, just occasionally, a kid stops, temporarily mesmerized, lost in thought gazing at the top of the elevator car through the open door, impervious to the university crowd passing by…” hey kid, you wanta go for a ride,” says the elevator man.
The Basset Hound, retired from hunting and lying in the sun on the porch, wouldn’t jump through the hoops with a fashionable hat, so the salesman kicked it, ignoring the kid at the door. The kid fed his kitten raw hamburger after weaning, and every dog in the neighborhood was now afraid of his cat, except that dog on the porch, which was surprisingly quick and accurate. No dog, Doby, Shep, or Rot ever entered the perimeter of the yard and escaped unscathed, one way or the other. Likewise for salesman who appeared with decreasing frequency.
The empire fears the unknown, which intelligent parents seek, making the latter the enemy of the former, and the former irrelevant to the latter, leaving the empire behind to rule itself out. Without you, the municipalities like their parent States, are always helplessly under water. It’s in your purely municipal interest to act accordingly.
The pieces are all there; you just have to put a subset of them together to meet your community’s economic interest in individual liberty, and reboot the currency accordingly.
Precious Bodily Fluids indeed. It must have the other to protect us from, the russkies have been displaced by the ‘dark’ ones. We can’t have an unmotivated soldiery running about, now can we?
there will always be a turgidson fighting in war room
“NPR growth is flatlining”. An older no-longer-available tote bag from the marvelous “Cat and Girl” comic (catandgirl.com):
http://notafangirl.tumblr.com/post/122126903/bullshit-i-listen-to-npr-and-i-suck-tote-bag
I have “Kennedy Fried Chicken” and “Future Corpses of America”.
Good post. I learn something totally new and challenging
on sites I stumbleupon on a daily basis. It’s always helpful to read content from other authors and practice something from other websites.