Again, an excessive number of links, but when so much is happening, it’s hard to cut down without cutting into bone. However, we can’t keep up this pace indefinitely without risking physical collapse, so carpe diem. –lambert
New Plant Language Discovered Discovery
In a time of widespread violence and disease, good news is no news Rational Optimist. “Is this the most ghastly silly season ever?”
GOLDMAN: Here’s The Simple Reason We’re Probably Not About To Have Another Huge Crash Business Insider
Fed blow to banks over ‘living wills’ FT
No Fed fireworks, but plenty of clues, expected at Jackson Hole Reuters
US banks plan ahead for UK exit from EU FT. “Legal entity optimisation.”
London Home Asking Prices Plunge Most in More Than Six Years Bloomberg
Papering over the cracks Herald Scotland (RS). More RBS follies.
San Diego Pension Dials Up the Risk to Combat a Shortfall WSJ
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
A National Debt Registry? Credit Slips. It’s always possible to make things worse….
Rusbridger – Handmaiden to Power Craig Murray
Inside the Grand Jury: Why Texas Governor Rick Perry Was Charged with Two Felonies Vice
High fashion, expense for Hillary travel Las Vegas Review-Journal. And presidential suites (!).
#BBCtrending: Diner offers discount for praying customers BBC. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!
Ukraine
Progress in ‘difficult’ Ukraine talks, says Germany BBC
Ukraine says its troops make breakthrough in rebel stronghold Reuters
Europe risks deeper economic crisis as Russia buckles and defaults mount in Ukraine Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Daily Telegraph
Iraq
Iraq’s Kurds Seize Most of Largest Dam After U.S. Strikes Bloomberg
The Common Enemy George Packer, The New Yorker. At last! Plus ça change…
Iraq Illusions NYRB
Ebola patients flee as Liberia clinic looted Al Jazeera
Ebolanomics New Yorker
Transplant Brokers in Israel Lure Desperate Kidney Patients to Costa Rica Times
Gaza
Phantom Bids LRB. The Palestinian Authority and its detractors.
Penang police refute denial of probe against teen for ‘liking’ pro-Israel FB page Malaysia Mail
The Shortest Distance Between Palestine and Ferguson Counterpunch
Ferguson
US riot: Police fire smoke canisters at Ferguson protesters, including children and media Hindustan Times and Missouri governor sends National Guard to Ferguson WaPo
The Coming Race War Won’t Be About Race Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Time. Class matters.
Ferguson Unrest Shows Poverty Grows Fastest in Suburbs Bloomberg
Autopsy Shows Michael Brown Was Struck at Least 6 Times Times
State officials defend Ferguson actions as Justice Department orders new autopsy WaPo. “Orders new autopsy.” That’s a headline your PR people never want to see.
Mike Brown protests: Fresh riots reveal deep divisions among police (+video) Christian Science Monitor
Police Threaten To Shoot, Mace Reporters In Ferguson HuffPo
U.S. Army Techniques Publication 3-39.33: Civil Disturbances Public Intelligence
Who belongs in America? (non-econ-related) Noahpinion. [ ] Privileged [ ] Oppressed [ ] It’s Complicated.
A Movement Grows in Ferguson New Yorker. Whoa, a reporter went and talked to the locals (!).
Missouri ACLU, authorities reach agreement on recording of police Politico
Class Warfare
Across Asia’s borders, labor activists team up to press wage claims Reuters
Europe pessimistic on income equality as Americans cling to dream FT. “And some are more equal than you can possibly imagine.”
How to Talk About Climate Change So People Will Listen Charles Mann, The Atlantic
Reply to “Libertarianism Is Very Strange” Boston Review
Antidote du jour (via)
I know we had another panda the other day, but Furzy Mouse sent in this bonus antidote:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
241 comments
Comments are closed.
“Most of Largest Dam”: is that meant to be comforting to the people downstream?
so Goldsachs says we aren’t set up for another crash b/c we lack the one (thats ONE) ‘precondition’…CREDIT GROWTH
http://soberlook.com/2014/05/whats-fueling-consumer-credit-growth-in.html
5/2014 “US consumer credit report surprised to the upside today, beating forecasts by nearly $2bn.”
“Banks have certainly been active, with Wells Fargo for example growing its auto loan book by 15% over the past year. And then we have the securitization markets, where asset-backed securities (ABS) are used to finance pools of auto loans and leases. ABS spreads have tightened since the taper-driven fixed income selloff last summer as demand for this paper remains strong.”
‘As an aside, these are precisely the types of markets the ECB would love to jump-start in the euro area (see post). With the banking system still undergoing deleveraging, the central bank is looking for a way to get the “shadow” banking involved in order to boost consumer (and corporate) credit growth.”
l i a r s
The Business Insider piece says there will probably not be a “bust” due to low credit growth. Low credit growth?!?! Just how do they define “low credit Growth” anyway? Overall, as in personal plus institutional? Only personal; well, what about something like education loans, that have huge tail risks, and for the only group left that can drive housing and other credit markets; College Educated Workers. Businesses, as in where is all the business lending for expansion? [Oh. We’re buying back corporate shares are we?] Governmental, oh, the Federal Reserve balance sheet! [Some disingenuity going on here, eh?]
the bombs have been certified and stamped. we’ll hear a whistle followed by a silence, then…
We are all old hands here i.e. we know it probably means that Goldman is busy getting out of their positions and preparing for a REAL crash.
Oh yes, and getting the muppets to die in another wat to cover their crimes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZBNdszL3iA
see 1.04
If you want to unload stocks, you have to convince someone to buy them
OR
Our investment advice is self interested, or deceitful…..
===================================
Its suppose to be a comedy routine…..BUT ITS NOT
Meh … a trillion in subprime autos here, there a trillion there in diploma millstones, a few trillion in slum-shack rentals, a couple of quadrillion in derivatives. Wake me when we hit a quintillion.
All wars are banksters wars, this is why we need another, the big one:
“Mr. Small expresses certainty that Western media is subservient to the financial interests trying to bring the confrontation about. He cites the Trans-Atlantic financial system under the control of the City of London and Wall Street which currently has 2 quadrillion dollars in financial aggregate outstanding. “Don’t ask me how many zeros that is. It will take too long to tell.” He calls the structure “a speculative bubble” that is getting completely
out of hand. It once exploded in 2008, he says, and what has been done since then has done nothing to solve it, and has only “made it worse.”
To try to maintain that bubble they [those behind the “bubble”] believe it’s absolutely necessary to stop any part of the world that’s developing economically under a different system, thus choosing to target Russia and China. “They have stated very clearly that they are prepared if necessary to take this to the point of nuclear confrontation, to try to get that kind of back down.” The strategic policy is most surely dictated by “the owners of this quadrillion dollar speculative bubble that they praise more than anything else in the world.”
http://en.ria.ru/analysis/20140817/192084699/Western-Media-Shockingly-Dishonest-on-Russia-Ukraine.html
“To try to maintain that bubble they [those behind the “bubble”] believe it’s absolutely necessary to stop any part of the world that’s developing economically under a different system, thus choosing to target Russia and China.”
They can be communist or socialist countries economically, there’s nothing to stop there.
But Russia and China (and others) want to get away from using the imperial currency. That is a no-no.
In the meantime, they have no choice but to keep accumulating them, pretty much like drug dealers have no choice but to take the dollar, even though they are ‘at war’ with America, or rather, America is at war with the drug lords. Money is money.
Yes, 9 out of 10 Muppets tune into Goldman for their insider trading news.
hahahaha
with the market up another triple digit day, I’d say the joke’s on us at this point. I know it’s on me, that’s for sure.
Perma-bears of the world wake up! You can’t project your depression, doom, despondency, despair — and even your dental problems — on the market and expect it to kow-tow to your tender sensibilities.
All the dudes calling for a crash last year are now blogging on Ukraine and Russia. The market’s up 40% since then. Now if it falls 40% it’ll be back to where it was when they said it would crash. How’s that for a smart call? Holy Day Job what a mistake it was for me to let these dudes captivate me with their eleemosynary erudition. Not that they tried to fail, but they did and we did == we all failed since we’re not rich yet and another year when by when we could’ve have had a 10-bagger and quit our jobs so we could waste every minute of the day like it was meant to be by God Himself (or Herself), it’s hard to say for sure.
Ya, I hear ya. The only thing that keeps me a sane craazyboy is I routinely perform a thought experiment where I went full in the market in 2009 and then naturally would closely watch the economy and other news to time my market exit and preserve my gains.
I would have exited 14 times by now.
‘Course I did quit the working world back when the Bible taught 4%-5% was not usurious, and if one had enough sheckles to retire off this, at a rate Jesus would approve of, one could do so and have a simple, peaceful, and happy peasants life on this world. Plus a few rounds of golf a month, of course.
that’s about all you need. Now that I’ve discovered upscale men’s sartorial stylin’ I’m aghast at what I’ve thrown money at. Some of the stuff in my closet is atrocious. Some of it can be tailored (I just spent $400 on tailoring and I’m still going.
But some of it is hopeless. Why on earth did I buy that tipped blazer from Men’s Wearhouse for $150? Whoa. I know what I was thinking at the time. It looks dumb but it’s still kind of cool. I’ll style in it in people’s faces. That lasted about 5 minutes. I lookd at myself and thought “I look like a real loser.” You don’t want things to be that honest. So I took it to the tailor and he’s gonna remove the white tipping. Then it’ll be a basic blue blazer. That’ll be OK. Then the shoes. It’s not horrible but I have a few pairs that really should not have been purchased. it’s not too late though. Since I’m so cheap and hate shopping, the damage is manageable.
That’s the thing. Most of the economy runs on spending that’s really a mistake. I’d say at least 40%. So the economy is 40% “larger” than it needs to be for all the same “utility’.
Take photography. My oh my what a festival of wasted money. I’d say at least 90% of money spent on cameras by amateur photograhers is a complete waste. It’s like me buying Tiger Wood’s golf clubs and all his clothes and then going out an whacking dirt and bending clubs. If anybody really knows what they’re doing, they only need one camera and one lens. Forever. The hard part is figuring out what to put in front of the camera. But that’s too hard. It’s easier just to throw money around.
Ya, if the economy was the right size…we’d all die!
Pretty weird when you think about it. Scary too.
Too bad work makes clothing a necessity. At least in CA you could get by with only 1 or 2 suits and slacks would do most of the time. Even managers would refer to the blue pin strip as their “funeral suit” when they were occasionally expected to wear one when corporate visitors show up.
Now, when I want to aggressively style, I show a little logo cleavage when I flex wearing my Bill Blass golf shirt. The $140 Adidas tennis shoes surely impress as well.
When I dress down for the gym, I wear the older, more worn out $140 Nike Swoosh tennies – just to let ’em know I’m still a player and not completely out of it.
But thanks to Ross, I think of $400 as a wardrobe, not a tailoring bill. Not including shoes, of course.
I started to think of sports equipment and hobbies more like food than investments. You end up with a big pile of stuff, but it was fun. Just don’t consume too much.
Right on. My wife does most of her clothes shopping as TJMaxx. (Ever since Goodwill stopped their Lyors Lone credit card scheme.)
Me? I still do all my sartorial styling at thrift shops. (Found a neat Hawaiian Beach Shirt from the fifties for five bucks last week.)
$400 USD? That’s all of our monthly bills plus some of the gas for driving around this car centric state.
(As for ten baggers; if I’d taken that $400 and started investing in coca futures on the Bogota commodities exchange back in the ’80’s…..)
The economy just can not take another hit, this time, the hit of everyone going naked.
The GDP-Must-Grow Youth League would go crazy over that…not that they are prudes.
Gym membership drives at low fees bring in the wannabes, sadly only about a 1/4 actually go for more than a few weeks till their over it.
skippy… after that is pure cash flow gravy…..
Re: the Time piece on Ferguson.
This has it right, as does Charles Blow’s piece in today’s NYT. This is about injustice: economic, political, and racial. And maybe in that order. The only surprise about Ferguson is that there haven’t been more Fergusons, and sooner.
Yeah, one of the best pieces I read in the MSM is by a former NBA player. I always liked Kareem though, despite his being a Laker.
Yes, but when the metaphorical peasants revolt, it always proves easier in the end for the powers that be to suppress and drug them than to cut them into the system. Black people provided THE critical labor producing export crops to pay for American development and industrialization (them and the 49ers, a huge proportion of whom were from China and Latin America). Once cotton picking was mechanized and blacks fled north for jobs and a better life (ostensibly away from Jim Crow, but to their dismay not really) white America hasn’t known what to do with them, other than ghettoize them and throw them in jail. Ferguson, alas, is not going to change that.
You may be right. I may be over-determining Ferguson. Alas.
But I continue to believe that it is only the threat of widespread social unrest that will force our system to change. And I believe it *can* change, that is the optimist in me speaking!
It can, but it’ll die hard trying and likely take several million down with it, if history is any guide.
Abdul-Jabbar is a great basketball player and a very wise man. When I was younger I was required to take a professional development course where a trained psychologist told the audience (of CPAs seeking to learn how to enhance their professional relationship with clients) to never play golf with your clients. The reason he gave was that for most of us, letting a client see how poorly we played might easily be imputed to our skills as a professional accountant. Not good! (I’m not making this up) After reading Abdul-Jabbar’s editorial, the thought came to me that seeing Obama “shoot hoops” should have been a warning. Think about it, had we paid more attention, we would have imputed how Obama was likely to govern and would have been spared all these years of his “leadership”. Along those lines, I’m thinking that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar should get out and start shooting hoops before the public because he might make a damn fine president. Seriously, the man is worth listening to. He is absolutely right that the MSM is determined to do the 1%’s bidding and keep us all fighting amongst ourselves while they to their high tech looting of our country.
Excellent piece by KAJ. Puts our bait-and-switcher-in-chief to shame.
And I can’t help remarking that on a day when we call the National Guard out on our own people, when it looks like social unrest could be beginning, Wall St. sees fit to rally strongly back to near records.
Is the Street really in such an amoral bubble of greed that it can’t see we have a very serious problem? Or are corporations truly that supranational, that profits must continue to surge even as the US slides into anomie?
I know day-to-day moves are often noise, but there seems to me a mighty disconnect here.
we’re ALL IN now Mike
“There’s an old adage: the sensation of drowning reminds you of everything you ever knew about swimming.”
MikeNY
August 18, 2014 at 11:55 am
Is the Street really in such an amoral bubble of greed that it can’t see we have a very serious problem?
Yes
Or are corporations truly that supranational, that profits must continue to surge even as the US slides into anomie?
Yes
It seems perfectly logical to me – the more they f*ck us, the better off they are.
Holy Market Fresno…we’re gone need FOAM
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-18/dozens-flash-crashes-including-aapl-bats-breaks
BTC Flashed too https://ounce.me/blog/btc-e-flash-crash-august-18th-2014/
#ALERT Malfunction at BATS-Y? causes dozens of flash crashes
Eric Scott Hunsader (@nanexllc) August 18, 2014
I can’t say for sure that Wall Street is negatively correlated with social justice, but I suspect a Neoliberal Portfolio* would do very well.
*Neoliberal Portfolio consists entirely of the most neoliberal leaning companies one can find.
I’m seeing the logo: Neoliberal Inside™
Are you seeing the ribbon twisted into a Heartbleed sort of shape, too?
I had the Intel logo in mind — that swoosh is so clean. Maybe send it in another direction. I suppose the alternative would be to add the bars of a jail cell.
Neoliberal portfolio- US currency with Robert Rubin’s signature as Secretary of the Treasury.
Down about 20% since inception, but it’s a tax savings monster.
Who’s this “we”, kimosabe? They have no problems at all. They’re the designated winners. And the National Guard and the Tea Party, which are effectively the oligarchs’ personal militias, will ensure the “correct” outcome.
It’s not that corporations are so supranational, but that the executive class and their wealth are.
No, no, no, no, kimosabe. The Tea Party could barely be called ‘their’ Brown Shirts. We all know what eventually happened to them now, don’t we?
The Night of the Long Knives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives
That book he mentioned in his opinion piece looks very interesting, but it does not look like the sort of book that a presidential contender reads!
http://www.amazon.com/Unspeakable-Things-Sex-Lies-Revolution/dp/1620406896
Oh, the other day I read this line by one of the greatest NBA centers ever, Bill Russell (he was speaking in favor of college player’s right to organize): “All great fortunes are amassed with either cheap or slave labor,”
Except for one essential dynamic factor ignored, because it is so much a part of the cultural fabric feeding the “economic, political, and racial,” no one notices it anymore:
Banana-republic MIC violence import-export economy:
* Baghdad/Mosul/Khandahar MIC hardware on Main Street
* n(PTSD-afflicted “war on terror” vets reabsorbed into police across USA)=?
Did someone say Osama bin Laden is dead?
agreed
that’s the kind of Antidote du Jour I need after todays links!
You’re really playing with fire here, Lambert. Hopefully none of your readers are foolish enough to repeat this “prayer” (really more of an incantation) three times during a full moon while standing inside a pentagram of pig’s blood–that would be really bad.
It’s all fun and games until someone inadvertantly summons an Elder God…
judging by today’s and this month’s links I would suggest that someone/thing in the Pentagon has been trying really hard to do that..
Continental Brother;
The sin of Pride usually sets the thaumaturge up for the “fate too horrible to relate!”
Lamberts reference to Lovecraftian Evil is appropriate. Our “Dear Leaders” have left objective reality far behind in their quest for ideological purity. The present bunch of elites are more like unto characters from a Clark Ashton Smith story.
Indeed, the modern power brokers bear a remarkable similarity to the fabled “Lovecraft Circle.” Each created fictional tomes to praise and bedevil (literally so in some cases) other members of the Elect. Whilst the Lovecraft Circle had fun crafting eldritch dooms as fiction, todays’ “leaders” craft dooms only too real. Their wakes leave wreck and ruin for all and sundry. Time to go hunt up my musty copy of “The Revelations of Gla’aki.”
just dont touch the monkey claw and we might stay on this side of dam*nation
and if you do, for god’s sake don’t answer the door!
“Dear! Juniors back home from Afghanistan!”
Someones been reading too much HP Lovecroft again.
Also, Ray Milland was actually born on the street my father used to live on, one of the poorest in Wales at the time, regrettably Welsh was not a first language.
Dear Fellow;
Ia! Ia!
Wales now. That’s a place that the Elder Gods would visit! [Any sanctuaries of “The Esoteric Order of Dagon” in Cardiff? It’s a seaport after all.]
Too late. The chant is now replicating in our browsers and being cached all around the internet.
Cthulhu will rise, wherever there is a full moon, and only a Pentagon can stop it!
would someone explain to me like i was a 7 year old…why would US banks leave UK when HALF the isle will be fracked…leaving the other half medicalized for profit($) ?
I’ll be a seven-year-old here, too. Good question.
There’s an old adage about that: Don’t frack where you bank.
+100!
CEOs earning 143 times more than company averages, pay study shows
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/aug/18/pay-gap-grows-ftse-bosses
With wealth in the hands of the few
And peasants with nothing to do
The future will see
A new recipe
For Klepto and Oligarch stew
The Limerick King
in the united states the rate is another 2.5 times that
In the middle of an article that is largely police propaganda, the LA Times notes this comment from Anthony Gray, an attorney for Michael Brown’s family:
Also, the article usefully clarifies that when Dr. Michael Baden says that none of the bullets were fired at point-blank range, all he means is that they “were fired from at least one to two feet away.”
They’re going to use the “he put his head down and was charging at me” thing like they did with Tsarnaev’s buddy in Florida. It’s conceivably true, although totally inconsistent with the eyewitness accounts. Then again, none of them said they saw the cop shooting Brown while standing over him, either.
Interesting things about the autopsy – I thought some of the eyewitnesses said he was shot in the back, but all the wounds are to the front. Also not sure why the Times article said they should be testing the cop car for gunshot residue, as I believe everyone agrees that one shot was fired in the car, they just argue about whether it was instigated by the cop getting partly out of the car and grabbing Brown and he fought back (very possible) or by Brown reaching into the car and trying to grab the cop’s gun (ridiculous, imo).
I would also add that the police and eyewitness stories (at least about the initial fight) dovetail more than it seems at first glance. Police say “Officer Wilson was leaving his police car when Mr. Brown allegedly pushed the police officer back into the car” and Johnson the eyewitness says “when the officer opened his door, it hit Mr. Brown. With his left hand, Officer Wilson reached out and grabbed Mr. Brown by the neck.”
It’s quite probable that the police’s report is skidding right over grabbing Brown’s neck and assaulting him hiding in that bland phrase “was leaving his police car.” I am also betting the “tried to grab the officer’s gun” thing indeed happened, but it was after the cop had his gun out and pointed at Brown from a foot or two away. Fear might easily make someone try and slap the barrel away from them in that situation, and it wouldn’t be immediately obvious to bystanders 15 feet away.
But the real question isn’t the first shot, it’s all the rest… for which Tiffany Mitchell’s account sounds awfully credible. Shooting a surrendering man with his hands up can’t be whitewashed no matter what had just happened. I suspect that’s where we’ll be hearing something like a “he had lowered his head and was preparing to charge the officer.”
Actually just saw that the “shot in the back” thing from Johnson comes after Johnson said he hid behind a car to avoid getting shot – he probably no longer had a clear view by that point.
Oh and finally, something to keep in mind – the posture of chin down to chest is not just consistent with “charging” but with collapsing – the shots that hit his head were the last two, so he could have been starting to fall down from the shock of being struck, which is certainly much more likely than that he surrendered with his hands up and only then decided to rush his attacker.
Christine Conetta, a producer for HuffPostLive and HuffPost Politics, adds:
The Guardian writes it up this way:
“The autopsy’s revelaton that Brown was shot in the head mirrored Wilson’s account of the disputed incident… In Wilson’s version, Brown was moving towards the officer in a threatening manner when he was shot. The autopsy concludes that all the shots were fired from the front.
“Wilson’s account is that Brown continued to move towards him even after the first shots were fired, and did not stop until suffering a mortal wound to the head. ‘He just kept coming,’ the friend said, characterising Wilson’s account.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/ferguson-michael-brown-shot-multiple-times-autopsy-shows-including-in-head
From what I can see, we in the general public don’t have adequate grounds at this point in time for either of the versions of the story. Given what’s out there at present, it seems quite possible that Wilson’s version (if it really is his version, which hasn’t been confirmed) is true, and would constitute an instance of lawful and justifiable use of deadly force.
If Wilson’s version of the story is true, then the Tueller Rule, which Yves discussed in the comments of the “Chris Hedges: ‘America is a Tinderbox’ ” post last year, is relevant:
http://www.theppsc.org/Staff_Views/Tueller/How.Close.htm
“moving towards him in a threatening manner”… Weasel words, purposefully vague, delivered through anonymous double hearsay grudgingly in response to multiple, dovetailing first person accounts from named witnesses. I’m pretty sure the residents of Ferguson have heard all they need to hear at this point to come to a decision.
Once Michael Brown was shot, there was no way for him to move towards a trained police officer in a way that actually posed any sort of threat, given that Brown did not possess a weapon. So even under this account, Wilson could have subdued Brown without shooting him “at least 6 times” and killing him.
Shooting a real person isn’t like a video game where you might hear a bell ring if you hit the target, cops say that it’s not always immediately obvious that a bullet has made contact. Are you some kind of expert in martial arts or people-shooting that you really know more than the police about subduing others, or have you just seen a lot of movies where a guy gets shot in the arm and immediately drops to the ground? People don’t really have “off” buttons in their limbs, you know.
From the first-person accounts that I have read, the pain form being shot is extreme. Hollywood propaganda, in fact, shows the opposite; heroes and villains brushing off a bullet wound with a grimace, while still engaging in effective attacks.
I did not say that a person immediately drops to the ground. I said that, without a weapon, there would be plenty of ways to subdue a person in extreme pain without shooting them multiple times. If someone shot you multiple times – whether a police officer or another individual – do you think that the burden of proof should rest on you or your family to show that the shooting was unjustified?
How does one respond to “extreme pain” if not by dropping to the ground? There are also first-person accounts of people not realizing that they had been shot for a minute or two. Is it not possible that, in the heat of the moment, Mr. Brown did not immediately realize that he had been shot in the arm? Remember that he was dead within a minute or so of the first shot being fired.
I don’t see the point of your pathos ending. I said nothing about burdens or proof, nor did I comment on the justifiability of the shooting. Please don’t project opinions on me.
Oh my f’ing God! Yes, let’s go to the British press for some truth about what happened in Ferguson, especially if it is all law and order and the cop was justified sort of thing (isn’t it the Brits who perfected this nonsense just a few years ago when their own streets eruped in the face of some equally fine white on black police work?). The eye witness testimony came out within a day or so of the shooting and was consistent. Yet, the cops, who train every single day for just this sort of thing (i.e., what to say to justify lethal force) are suddenly to be believed because … what??! a picture with some bullet holes shows up enabling the Rorschach of bullshit to commence full force.
So the worm turns …
“Rorschach of bullshit” – great phrase for the fantastical circumstances that people imagine in their apologia for the powerful.
Actually, Ferguson could stand to take a lesson from those cops. Those cops exercised some restraint after their “mistake.” These cops are certifiable.
They evidence no real recognition of the fact that they damaged their own credibility. You still have the Ferguson police chief squaring off with the traffic authority the Governor called in, telling him who’s boss, etc.
There’s something to be said for remaining attached to a larger sense of what reality is, even if it’s a case of being clever in ones’ own defense.
Not happening here.
re: ” The Common Enemy” –George Packer
Packer’s piece is epitomizes the Beltway’s archaic belief in American Exceptionalism.
Substitute Washington DC for ISIS and he hits the nail on the head:
“Armed movements driven by an ideology like that of ISIS are expansionist as well as eliminationist.”
“The Guardian never stands up to the security services or the establishment. It just wants you to believe that it does.”
Over the weekend, Esther Addley, a senior news writer for The Guardian, referred to Julian Assange as an “anti-privacy campaigner”. Just to prove that stupidity and serving power go hand-in-hand, she also called Ecuador a “central American country”.
I like the The Guardian for its culture section—excellent and entertaining film reviews done on video, and its nature/environment photography section is quality. I check in w/ the UK Comment Is Free section occasionally.
As far as world conflict and politics The Guardian sucks—-your basic shill for US/UK/NATO hegemony.
Ned Ludd,
My Guardian rant has tripped numerous tripwires, suffice to say, the papers a bloody travesty of its former self, and now little more than a neoliberal rag under its present ghastly Editor – which is a great loss as it really used to be an exceptional news organ, now sadly corrupted by access to power and greed.
Be fair,the guardian was the only paper to blow the lid off rusbridger’s piano lessons when no one else would touch them in the mainstream media-and it was the one location where a confirmed outbreak of cleggmania was isolated at the last election.
Christopher
Before what year would you say it used to be an exceptional news organ?
I’d say it was a very good news organ under Peter Preston who edited the Guardian from 1975-1995, I started reading the Guardian regularly as of 1983 through to 2001, the rot set in with Rusbridger and all the “Third Way” baloney it was espousing, which coincides about 18 months after the Blair ascendency within the Labour Party – Bambi was Rusbridgers love affair, as was David Miliband – the paper was hostile to Brown in a way it never was with Blair, even when it came to Iraq and the suspect suicide of a detractor of Blair. The paper was slavish in having David miliband crowned Labour leader after the election, such was Rusbridgers and Andrew Rawnsley’s detestation of Brown. I’ve commented previously on this and a big post of mine is stuck in “moderation” limbo presently, suffice to say, not impressed by its desire to be an International newspaper and its terrible slavish support for US overseas policy – Snowden was a smokes green I’m afraid to say.
i decided to boycott the guardian some few weeks ago when they censored a comment I made on the israeli occupation of gaza and the massacre of its people that did not break any of their guidelines. i will stay away until things change over there. their best columnists, such as george monbiot, can be found elsewhere anyway.
While we’re at boycotting mainstream outlets I would add the HuffPost which no longer allows me to comment probably because of my views on Ukraine. The place resembles all the other official Democratic Party sites, MSNBC, DailyKos, and Comedy Central.
Comedy Central, an official Democratic Party site, huh?
The Republicans tried their hand at comedy a few years ago, but none of what they thought was funny, was funny (can’t remember the name of the show, but it failed, spectacularly).
Don’t blame comedians, liberals, or Democrats for Republicans/conservatives being so damned easy to laugh at.
Democrats are hard to laugh at, this is true.
“But you got to laugh to prevent yourself from cryin'” – The Pursuit of Happiness, “Hard to Laugh”
Glad i am not alone – My blood pressure is much better now, strangely the same BS that the Guardian prints from where you would normally expect it, doesn’t wind me up anything like as much. Perhaps it’s because the info from the former is being presented under false pretenses as with faux progressives like Blair & Obama, who pretend & did pretend to have their natural constituents best interests at heart – it feels like a betrayal, which is probably why I despise them even more than the Cameron’s & Bushes of this World who to a certain extent, like crocodiles, cannot help their natures.
Also, it is The Guardian and other media liberals who set limits on what is acceptable discourse on the left. They achieve status by ostracizing writers and analysis considered too gauche for the mainstream debate.
“Gauche” being French for both left and awkward. Well played, Mr. Ludd.
Great, great Counterpunch article. But the final, legal word on violent repression in America’s Bantustans is the Convention to End Racial Discrimination. You can watch the US government take a whuppin at the link, called CERD 85.
Never heard of it, right? Course not. The government doesn’t like independent experts holding the US to its binding legal obligations.
Raimondo: back to the sixties.
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/08/17/back-to-the-sixties/
So who exercising power in the U.S. was ever a hippy?
Any of the Bushes? Either of the Clintons? Harry Reid? Boxer? Feinstein? Boehner? Any of the Supreme Court Justices? Any state governors? Maybe Janet Yellen? Kerry did sort of put on a show and threw away someone else’s medals, but given his family’s wealth he spent his summers with the Forbes family, not panhandling in the Haight. Maybe Karl Rove?
Whom did you have in mind?
I assume by “you” you mean he. The quote is from Raimondo. And he is using hippy in a rhetorical sense, not saying they literally lived in a commune or wore tie dye. So if you want examples of the sixties antiwar left who have been holding power in our current era how about the Clintons? There’s future president Hillary
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/18/AR2008051802101.html
And former prez Bill
“While at Oxford he also participated in Vietnam War protests and organized an October 1969 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam event”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton
Raimondo is also taking about the neocons we’ve heard so much about in recent years, some of whom began as lefwing Trotskyites although not necessarily antiwar activists. In an case the “hippies” is rhetorical. Perhaps “sixties generation leftists” would better suit.
So, the “sixties anti-war left” = sixties generation leftists = hippies? Well, Nixon thought that, I grant you.
I have a tome somewhere on my political curio shelf titled “The New Right at Harvard.” Published in 1983 by the Conservative Caucus, it consists of several lectures and question and answer sessions from a series of seminars held at Harvard under the auspices of the Kennedy Institute of Politics in 1981. The leading lights were: Howard Phillips, Paul Weyrich, John Lofton, Richard Viguerie, Morton Blackwell, and Gen. Albion Knight (USA-Ret.) The book is a hard headed analysis of early ’80’s American politics and cultural issues. No overt Hippies here. Just good old fashioned Cold Warriors. Their legacy haunts us today. If only the real Left was as well organized.
The clintons like to market themselves as hippies I think. It doesn’t mean they are the real deal.
They do? I must not have gotten the memo on that. They wear tie-die? Bill has a grey ponytail? Hillary dropped a ton of acid when she was a kid? What, exactly?
John Kerry, the medal pitcher, comes immediately to mind.
Typically, hippies didn’t do riverine warfare in Vietnam.
I think what people are doing here is saying Person X has negative characteristic C, and hippies have negative characteristic C, therefore Person X is a hippie. Well, alright. It’s an old wheeze that’s been working since the 60s, so why not keep on doing it?
“In your heart you know he’s Right.”
Why can’t we have propaganda of that quality for the Left now?
Hippies were very few in number even back in the day. Their presence was a sudden and quick flowering that captured the imagination of the younger parts of the masses. But after the state executed murders of MLK and RFK the fear set in and people moved from crash pads to grad school–I saw it happening as millions just gave up and moved their focus to cocaine, sex, and real-estate and gave birth to TINA thinking. Of course in those days the rampant criminality of the elites was not as dramatic as it is now.
There’s still a certain non-organizational hippie non-event that draws a couple thousand people every year to pray for peace. For years before Occupy, attendees have had the pleasure of AWACS overhead, armed LEOs on horseback, informants in the populace, and psyops galore. The Deep State is greatly irritated by groups who start to challenge the established cultural narrative of “greed is good”. The rave scene, originally founded on the principles of PLUR (Peace Love Unity Respect), got the same denigration from the DS moral police division that the hippies got – “Look! They’re doing *DRUGS*! And possibly enjoying sex too! Everything they do involves snuggling in Satan’s bosom!” It, like the hippies before, has had it’s original idea/intent decapitated and pushed in a more purely hedonistic and capitalistic direction (raves have gone from being thrown in abandoned buildings and other remote areas, kept secret until the day of the event and still involving 3 meet up points to get directions to the actual event, to arena events being sponsored by Microsoft and Google – WTF).
Dumb comment and more boomer bashing. The hippies I know all moved to Maine in the mid-70s and started organic farms, seed companies, and institutions like MOFGA that have been very good for the state, and even the world. I don’t know a lot of hippies that ended up running the government. If you’re thinking a certain Rhodes scholar, inhaling doesn’t make you a hippie, any more than not inhaling does.
Jim Crow watch:
RISHON LEZION Israel (Reuters) – Israeli police on Sunday blocked more than 200 far-right Israeli protesters from rushing guests at a wedding of a Jewish woman and Muslim man as they shouted “death to the Arabs” in a sign of tensions stoked by the Gaza war.
Protesters, many of them young men wearing black shirts, denounced [the bride, Maral] Malka, who was born Jewish and converted to Islam before the wedding, as a “traitor against the Jewish state,” and shouted epithets of hatred toward Arabs including “death to the Arabs.” They sang a song that urges, “May your village burn down.”
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin criticized the protest in a message on his Facebook page. “Such expressions undermine the basis of our coexistence here, in Israel, a country that is both Jewish and democratic,” Rivlin, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud bloc, said.
http://news.yahoo.com/israeli-wedding-jew-muslim-draws-protesters-amid-war-000304290.html;_ylt=AwrBEiIDRfFTUDAASynQtDMD
————
WTF? Can you imagine Obama responding to an ugly disruption of a Jewish wedding by describing the U.S. as ‘both Christian and democratic’? The president of Israel just publicly defined the couple as second-class citizens under Israel’s numerous apartheid laws. Fine, if we weren’t paying $3 billion a year for this repellent racism.
Probably need more than $3 billion, as tourism from visiting Christian pilgrims must be suffering quite a bit now (I imagine), due to the on-going military situation, even if these tourists are not boycotting out of principle, like Ireland is with produce from the land of milk and honey, but out of the fear of getting hurt.
I really don’t have much use for Noah. I mean, he’s entitled to his opinions and all, it’s just that they’re often assinine, from my perspective. I had to really struggle to get through this one, just to make sure he didn’t have anything useful to say…nope:
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to contradict you, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Newsflash Noah: saying that you’re not drawing an analogy between two things and then claiming that you can learn about one thing by reference to the other is nonsensical. I’m not trying to draw an analogy here, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
The most frustrating thing about Noah’s writing is I don’t even think he understands how confused his thinking is: he’s convinced he’s a really smart guy! A really smart-guy who isn’t going to try and “whitesplain” away racism–he just wants to tell you that he’s been picked on too (as a white guy) and it wasn’t racist, so the racism problem is probably overblown and all in the non-white people’s heads. If only their attitude was better, they wouldn’t be seeing racism everywhere. Maybe we just need to buy copies of “The Secret” for everyone who thinks (wrongly, obviously) that racism is a real thing in this country.
What a dick….
p.s. Confirmation bias can affect self-satisfied, white, d-bags as well.
Yes, interesting piece, wasn’t it?
I wrote here a couple of days ago about the unspoken Washington policy toward Russia. Now comes this courtesy of Barron’s: As for Ukraine, Friedman (founder of Stratfor) has a different view of Vladimir Putin’s performance there than does much of the Western press. Whereas Putin is commonly viewed as the consummate power politician, a chess player many moves ahead of the competition, Friedman claims that he has so badly bungled the Ukraine situation that he might be deposed as president of Russia in the not- too-distant future.
“Forget his sky-high voter approval ratings in Russia,” Friedman asserts. “There are rumblings of discontent inside the Kremlin over his apparent loss of Ukraine to the West, in conjunction with a poorly performing economy being driven into recession in part by U.S. and EU economic sanctions arising from confrontation in Ukraine. One shouldn’t forget that Khrushchev was dumped by close Kremlin associates in 1964 as a result of the diplomatic humiliation the USSR suffered in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and economic woes over the next year and a half.”
The article goes on to further illuminate the case that regime change in Russia is the featured item on the menu. In fact, it is the only desired outcome that will satisfy the United States. First order of business is to show Putin is a bumbler not a Grand Master and that his overthrow is only months away. Europe better be prepared for a long siege.
Friedman is clearly deluded and expressing his masters distaste for an independent Russia under someone who’s willing to tell the neoliberals where to go and stick there wad of cash – still, nice to know that whatever Putin does, the USA, and by implication, NATO and the EU want shot of him, For all our sakes I sincerely hope they fail in their derangement.
The U.S. National sSecurity State wants to take over the Russian Federation one way or the other. There are forces in Russia, as there were in Ukraine, which are under the direction of U.S. intel that are attempting to make alliances with oligarchs and, in particular, Russian organized crime gangs just as they did in Ukraine.
Ukraine is now essentially a failed state, and that is the neoliberal’s (Obama etc.) desired goal for Russia. A failed state has no defenses against the predation of western corporations. The suffering of those living in those countries targeted by neoliberal intervention is seen as pre-requisite of the desired outcome.
It’s all one big mobius strip of greed, corruption and anti-human ideology.
You wonder what nods and winks went on when Yeltsin designated Putin as his successor. I’ve believed for 20 years that Yeltsin was de facto on the CIA payroll (they orchestrated and bankrolled his election campaigns openly). So what was whispered to Yeltsin’s handlers about the young Putin fresh from the KGB? And is the animosity towards him a delayed reaction to the understanding that he is not a US puppet like Yeltsin was after all.
I think there are two fundamental problems with most observers of Russia.
One is to assume that it acts as if it were an extension of Putin and not the other way around, that Putin represents Russia. Regardless of character foibles and appearance. I tend to believe that Putin understands the national interest of Russia, and more importantly any regime change will only result in a leadership that will behave exactly with the same interests.
Two is that those who should know better in the West assume that Russia has inherited all the problematic aspects of USSR, and in knee-jerk fashion judge Russia on the distant memory of the myths of evils of the Soviet Union. It becomes particularly galling when Ukraine and Georgia are somehow seen as not being as much a constituent part of USSR historically, so that Russia becomes demonized as the sole inheritor of the Soviet system. We should all count our blessings that Russia is the sole inheritor of the nuclear weapons which in the hands of the recent leadership of the other former Soviet republics would be a true nightmare.
Does anyone take Stratfor seriously?
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/02/stratfor-is-a-joke-and-so-is-wikileaks-for-taking-it-seriously/253681/
The MIC and the deep state do. Contrary to infantile liberal dogma, just because someone’s wrong doesn’t make their violence any less effective.
Actually, I think Stratfor has a good argument. It seems Russian public support is very high for Putin for holding on to the Crimea but also in expectation he will not allow Kiev to overrun the Donbass. But if the Donbass is overrun, I suspect Putin will become vulnerable. It is hard to tell from all the propaganda but the Donbass rebel controlled region does appear more and more vulnerable.
I am also wondering that if he intended to prevent the overruning of the Donbass that perhaps he should have moved much earlier and more decisively as he did with the Crimea. It seems the price and risk to halt Kiev becomes greater and greater as time passes except for the gas factor. I suspect Putin is hoping the Donbass holds out till winter and the gas weapon become a factor. Of course, the Donbass may not hold out that long.
Time will tell whether the Donbass holds or falls but if it does fall, a lot of people will be unhappy with Putin.
i also think stratfor is closer to the truth than most here. putin is clearly playing catch-up instead of being the chess master several moves ahead of his opponent. he is stuck between a rock and a hard place now because either he intervenes on the side of the rebels and risks war, or he lets the ukies overrun them and gather forces to take crimea later on and start a war that way.
Rob Crilly, the Pakistan and Afghanistan correspondent of The Telegraph, was arrested in Ferguson. Once police “walked [him] away from the area”, he was released. Journalists are being conditioned to stay in their pen.
For journalists, it is very important to follow police orders. Ryan Reilly, the Huffington Post reporter who was arrested at McDonald’s, emphasized this in his interview on CNN: “We were obeying officers’ commands and trying to get out of the restaurant as quickly as possible.”
I think the current strain between the press and law enforcement will dissipate once the police realize that the press will follow orders; they only get upset if you still arrest them.
You would think, maybe, perhaps, they’d have the balls to say “We were carrying out our 1st Amendment right to report to the people what is going on in Ferguson–if the cops don’t like that, they obviously don’t like out American constitution.” Barbara Ehrenreich states in her excellent book Fear of Falling that the key moment for the press was the Democratic National Convention in 1968. The press reported the cops running riot and the editors were appalled. Then, two days later the polls came in and it turned out that Mr. and Mrs. Whitebread America were overwhelmingly of the opinion that Daily’s cops were completely justified in smashing those uppity longhairs. Within hours the tenor of the reporting changed dramatically, as the media elite discovered that they were out of synch with their audience and the TV and press raced to see who could backtrack fastest and win back their bread and butter audience. They’ve been racing to the Right ever since.
Mr. X did say they would come to love them….
Re. “Missouri ACLU, authorities reach agreement on recording of police”:
FERGUSON, Missouri — The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri on Friday reached an agreement with state authorities on the rights of journalists and members of the public to record police activity.
The St. Louis county government, the city of Ferguson, and the superintendent of the Missouri State Highway Patrol all acknowledged in a Friday agreement that both members of the media and the public at large are permitted to record events so long as they are not interfering with the duties of the police.
Failure to instantly obey any police order, even a clearly illegal one such as, say, surrendering one’s recording devices without a warrant mandating such, will of course be construed as ‘interfering”.
Liberals and their loopholes.
If you step out of the pen, you are interfering with the police.
Link to article about photojournalist Scott Olson’s arrest.
Here is a link to the Saturday interview. “I think it’s crazy. I really don’t understand why they have M16’s out there, why they have sniper rifles out there… A rifle, you just don’t know where that round’s gonna stop.”
As a side note, this is a different person than Scott Olsen, the Iraq War veteran injured at Occupy Oakland.
Yves/Lambert,
Many thanks for the link to: “Rusbridger – Handmaiden to Power Craig Murray”.
I’ve been railing against many stances the UK’s Guardian has taken on its website as a poster on CIF since 2007, notably its “sellout” under its present management to the UK’s ruling elite, whilst Craig Murray makes no mention of it, the decision by Rusbridger to demolish the “Scott Trust”, which guaranteed the papers independence as a liberal political force within the UK’s MSM was an unprecedented attack on all the paper has stood for more than a century – all so he could have a nice web present to fool folks in the USA, Australia and countless other countries that once respected the Guardian as a voice of reason and truth in a mad world.
Each and every time I and many others pointed out the hypocrisy of the Guardian, its fawning over Blair, its support for David Miliband, its extreme sensitivity to the Israeli/Palestinian issues or its unsavoury relationship with Apple, posters were banned, with no recourse to as to why the truth was being censored or hidden from some of the papers less discerning readers.
Why Greenwald and Snowden choose the Guardian to reveal the abuses of the NSA is beyond me, particularly given the papers own relationship with the elite in London and political parties. Rusbridger is an insult to the memory of CP Scott and the Scott Trust which guaranteed the papers credibility, even during the Thatcher years – now its but a timid lapdog, happy to loose UK subscribers of its physical print edition as it sells its soul out to gain a US audience, hence its ambivalence towards whats been happen in Israel and willingness to promote a rather nasty form of Zionism, which as a suggested in yesterdays links, if I applied these technique to promoting independence of my own nation, I’d be imprisoned for inciting racial hatred.
Shame on his and his useless hacks is all I can say, with the exception of two or three journalists who desperately should leave this rotten edifice and write elsewhere – even the Independent Newspaper, now owned by a Russian oligarch, is preferable to the Guardian under the quisling Rusbridger.
It might have been that Rusbridger was the best of a bad lot. The story did get out, after all, unlike James Risen’s story on Bush’s warrantless surveillance, on which Bill Keller planted his pasty pale posterior until Bush was safely re-elected. (To be fair, we might have dodged a bullet with Kerry. But it wasn’t Keller’s job to make that happen (OK, OK, except it was.)) What alternative English-speaking newspaper would you suggest?
Lambert,
The quality of the Independent has improved substantially since it was hover off by Mr. Reilly to a Russian Oligarch, the same oligarch who owns the London Evening Standard – which in itself would have raised serious questions had the NSA reports appeared in that news organ. Further, you’d need to look at the furore in the UK over something like the “Spycatcher” scandal and do a comparative analysis – the fact remains, since the Guardian’s stance against Iraq and the WMD Dossier in the early 2000s the papers standards have been downhill as far as being a “liberal” news outlet is concerned. On a personal note, the loss of the Guardian and of my own Labour Party, that is the Party I joined in 1982, has been most unwelcome by me and many fellow travellers – which is why many of us are now on the fringes posting on Blogs like NC and wondering where to vote in forthcoming elections, which for me at least means voting Green.
greenwald chose the guardian because they gave him editorial independence and snowden chose greenwald, presumably, off the back of his salon work. the guardian was contractually powerless to stop greenwald from publishing the scoop so it chose to get on board.
Re: Ferguson
I’m reminded of the events after the Rodney King trial, and the song that Sublime wrote about it:
Harsh sentiments…but can you blame people? You push and squeeze and oppress people for decades…centuries…what do you expect is gonna happen when they finally say “enough is enough”?
Apologies for the profanities slipping through…but it’s a pretty profane situation, so…
I have to say, I don’t recall anywhere in the First Amendment that mentions curfews…anybody else? I’m no legal scholar but it seems like “…shall make no law…” is pretty clear.
And Bradley Nowell was a white guy.
Funny how living in one of these places ultimately makes you see things from a socio-economic, as opposed to a purely racial, us vs. them perspective.
If you want people to act like animals caught in a trap, treat them like animals caught in a trap (we are, after all, animals, at our core, and will react as such).
Some really smart people are still operating under the delusion that Obama is not corrupt – http://www.salon.com/2014/08/17/how_to_wreck_the_gop_in_3_easy_steps/
Now I’m really confused! I thought Obama was going to improve our standing within the worldwide community and have Muslims love the US.
Oops. Just another campaign gimmick to go along to getting the youth to vote him in and then stick it to them with Obamacare. If they don’t participate in Obamacare (at high rates), the Obamacare economics model collapses.
I love how all those who voted for him are now paying the price of his empty promises. The middle class hasn’t improved their lot. Wall Street has. Main Street hasn’t.
This president is a fraud who spends millions of dollars on continual vacations and yet can’t find a few thousand dollars to allow visitors to tour the people’s house — the White House.
And it’s sad to see the press, who is supposed to have an adversarial relationship with the president, licking his polished penny loafers and becoming an extension of his campaign.
Justice, social harmony, universal brotherhood, etc. do not trickle down with a few persons elevated to join the elites.
One day, when we rush to give tax breaks to the world’s most powerful auto manufacturing company from Africa, we will all laugh at the days of trickle-down politics.
‘I do no believe in trickle down economics. But trickle -down politics just might work.’
‘Really?’
How could anybody not get the fact that Obama is all about enabling a massive corporate looting of this country. He’s not going to try to enforce anything, unless its just for show, as he feverishly works behind the scenes to gut the ability of regulators to regulate, forever, via trade policy. That’s what he wants his real legacy to be.
I think you are asking the wrong question. What do people in the media gain by not getting the fact that Obama is all about enabling a massive corporate looting of this country? If you want a steady paycheck in the press, you do not bite the corporate hands that feed you (although it is okay to wring your hands a bit and cry while the oligarchs destroy the world).
The comments are particularly interesting. It seems that some of the Democratic fans who fancy themselves players don’t even care about principle anymore, just identity and a blue tick in the W column.
Boy, that came out of nowhere, huh?
I was just a bit stunned at the baldness of it. Usually they pretend to some sort of principle, even if it’s the usual about relationships to the means of reproduction.
On the other hand, if Netroots Nation is the job fair for Versailles progressives, we could fairly say that Salon is their Zappos.
Interesting quote AEP has for us in his Telegraph piece:
Of course in any “normal” time violating a country’s borders in any way would be a breach of international law. But, as things stand today, there is no “international law” that means anything–there really isn’t. It would be nice if such a thing existed but it has been utterly shredded over the years by the U.S. and the Israelis chiefly. There is, similarly, no such thing as the “free world” other than a propaganda term for the Empire. This should be obvious.
Now we sit and see what develops—will the new Cold War become hotter? If you think about it–at the very least the new Cold War strengthens the hand of the oligarchs in Europe–is this what the European public really wants? Appears that they do really want to be subjects of the Empire and not citizens of their own countries.
he didn’t specify around whose neck the noose will tighten
Somehow they keep forgetting to mention that Ukes have been shelling Russia for weeks now..
Reuter’s Ukraine breakthrough. Surely some pictures will be forthcoming of the Ukie flag flying over Lugansk? Think of it as the civil war’s Saddam statue moment: a made for TV propaganda moment. Then again, still waiting for the visual evidence of Friday’s glorious Ukie triumph over the invading Russian armor….
Found photographic evidence of convoy treachery
Shaun Walker, Moscow Correspondent of The Guardian, will soon tweet this and claim that he saw it happen himself.
For anyone not doing so yet, “Ukraine says” is your cue that what follows is pure BS.
Especially when it’s in the headline.
i had to get something on my stomach to read ‘Ebola patients flee as Liberia clinic looted’…did they loot medical supplies? noooooooo did they loot doctors? noooooooo cigar boxes or xboxes ?
‘WHO’ loots contagious dying people?? loved ones? noooooooo Men With Clubs…thats ‘WHO’.
the spin is spun…their ‘slums’ are about to be torched
map me Mercy Street Please http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0igYRShgNIQ
Dear aby;
I suspect ‘they’ are about to torch Americas’ slums too. Notice the countries quietly closing their borders to the Ebola infected nations in toto? (Kenya is restricting flights from the Ebola Belt.) The real worry is Lagos. Several isolated cases there. If it gets loose in Lagos, all of Equatorial Africa may as well be written off. Also, some cases in Jo’burg! There’s a disaster waiting to happen.
http://online.wsj/articles/ebola-virus-west-african-treatment-centers-filling-up-fast-says-who-1408107358
I’ve got an obviously crazy theory that Nigerian terrorists are stealing infected people from remote areas and dropping them on street corners in the big cities and that’s why we have the spread from small villages where it always died out in the past and now it is spreading to more regions and larger population centers.
But I just make up stuff like that all the time.
You work for the NYT, don’t you. Come on. Don’t be bashful. We’re here to help. You can get over it if you want to. Others have.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/14/how-bureaucrats-let-ebola-spread-to-nigeria.html
I don’t think you need terrorists. You just need infected people w/ the resources to travel before they are immobilized.
I had dinner yesterday evening w/ a friend from the DC area that is an infectious disease physician. People are justifiably scared shtlss in the affected areas and their perimeters. Even the least educated are savvy to the reality the Ebola is, on average, a death sentence. Relatives of known victims wont go near them, they will throw them food and run away. Many doctors and nurses are declining to treat victims, leaving the care to nursing assistants who ma not be savvy to correct hygiene practices… basically the formula for out of control. A colleague just returned to the US asymptomatic, apparently fortunately not infected, but was not screened or quarantined.
The primary host (bats perhaps?) and the virus strategy for survival in the host has yet to be established. Ebloa has been self-regulated in the past by virtue of fast onset of symptoms leading to death with little opportunity for travel. Perhaps this strain’s symptomatic behavior, in somecases apparently delayed. combined w/ more opportunity to travel (than say victims in the the last outbreak in the Congo) allows more opportunity for infection.
FWIW, for the conspiracy theorists, the professional assessment is that Ebola is a impractical choice for intentional weaponization.
It seems to have weaponized itself.
I can’t remember where, but I read once, that the towns that survived the Black Death were those who stopped trade and contact with outsiders, early on.
Also interesting was that descendants of the people of those towns (who had not been exposed to or culled by the disease), now show increased susceptibility to psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis (both auto-immune disorders).
Mother nature asserting herself.
“Also interesting was that descendants of the people of those towns (who had not been exposed to or culled by the disease), now show increased susceptibility to psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis (both auto-immune disorders).”
That’s interesting, I didn’t know that.
So the survivors may have marker genetic mutations. I know little about Ebola, but I’m my takeaway was that I’m really not far behind the experts unfortunately.
I’m sad my takeaway
“I can’t remember where, but I read once, that the towns that survived the Black Death were those who stopped trade and contact with outsiders, early on.”
There is an interesting time series map of Europefloating out there on the internetz tha implys. My recollection is that it stopped and flanked the geography that is now Poland.
http://wadsworth.cengage.com/history_d/templates/student_resources/0534600069_spielvogel/InteractiveMaps/swfs/map11_1.html
Spread of the Black Death
There was a genetic mutation that conferred resistance to infection by the Plague bacillus. This same genetic mutation gave descendants of the Plague survivors the ability to resist HIV.
htpp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/10/4/I_104_05.html
Amended link:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/10/4/I_104_05.html
Blast! I’m contacting PBS to see if some of that Kroc money is behind this!
Ambrit,
Indeed..
Actually Ray Kroc was the *hole, his wife Joan was pretty much a charitable goodegg, if not somewhat of a passive aggressive against R.Koc’s principles.
In 1972, Kroc was Richard Nixon’s largest campaign contributor (I believe at ~$225,000) which was about the last time I had a McDonalds product on principle, (kinda easy anyway because it sucks), except for a couple events at the McDonalds Lodge, which is run by Hyatt so it isn’t McD food so it doesn’t count.
The PBS program (NOVA?) I recall was a fascinating one.
My friend invites anyone that doesn’t believe in Evolutions to explain viral mutation. It’s in your face. Cultivate any bug, poison it, and cultivate that fractional bit that survived, repeat ten times, then compare to original. Case Closed.
NIMBY syndrome, It may seem heartless and cold to the remote observer, but consider the circumstances on the ground for the average person in the area.
at this point i can honestly say ‘if only’ …but noooooooo, ‘they’ are going to play this like any other game UNTIL ‘they’ realize it was their last game TOO!
“You can’t make anything idiot proof because idiots are so ingenious.”
Ron Burns
Yves and Lambert: Thanks so much for all your hard work. The articles and links on this page have become my daily newspaper — far more interesting and relevant than is usually available from the standard media sources.
But please take care of yourselves, OK? Your readers need you!
I agree. There is so much uninformative spin out there, it is nice to have Naked Capitalism’s daily list of Links to find articles of substance.
Here here !
ben lawsky strikes again: PwC banned from selling channel 2 work to NY-based companies for 2 years.
not as severe as the punishment should have been, but definitely more than just the cost of doing business.
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-hits-pricewaterhousecoopers-with-2-year-consulting-ban-2014-8
Any penalty that’s not jail time is a cost of doing business. Tell Ben that from me, mkay?
Yes, the elites know exactly what is happening in society: “Demonstrations, public disorder, and riots happen for a number of reasons. Some of these reasons are economic hardships, social injustices, ethnic differences (leading to oppression), objections to world organizations or certain governments, political grievances, terrorist acts, other man-made disasters, and natural disasters.” (public intelligence AFM)
Their response is to spend a lot of money. This money is not used to undo the above injustices which they so accurately catalog. No, it is used to up-armor every police force in site, to increase the surveillance state, to foment more wars–in short, to enrich themselves. This is where I think the analysis of Kareem Abbul-Jabar is so important.
We have got to recognize what is happening to us. The elites understand what they are doing, who they are doing it to and what effect it has. It’s time for the rest of us to have that same understanding and act together for the common welfare (even the welfare of elites, if they only knew that!).
It’s always interesting to see how many here comment that the alleged “mistakes” made by government are intentional and part of an overall plan. We had some very articulate arguments on both sides presented yesterday. I think it is an important dialogue to have.
if it was ever intentional they’d have it ALL by now
‘they’ put their pants on the same way you & i do
‘they’ just can’t see past their greedy superior noses
noses won’t matter for long…think mother superior nature
Welcome Back Banger ‘)
Emerging solar plants scorch birds in mid-air:
http://www.contracostatimes.com/environment/ci_26355983/emerging-solar-plants-scorch-birds-mid-air
Small is beautiful
Less is more.
We should just consume less. Jevon knew all about solar panels, saved, perhaps, these combusting birds.
Or…a Buffalo Wings franchise under every solar plant?
If you believe in flying pigs, they will have to compete with pork ramen shops.
“Small is beautiful”. Indeed. So is local. So the mega solar plant, in the name of the environment, saves the atmosphere while killing the birds that inhabit it. Some solution they got there. What is wrong with local, smaller solutions: solar panels on individual homes, perhaps a much smaller municipal solar plants?
Well, birds will crap on your rooftop panels. Besides, these aren’t mega plants – they just look that way.
“More than 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, reflect solar rays onto three boiler towers each looming up to 40 stories high”.
Sounds plenty mega to me. .
It looks and sounds mega, but not in terms of power output. The article didn’t mention the “rated output” of the plant, but whatever they say for MW output you have to multiply by the .3 “capacity factor” for solar in the Mohave Desert. This co-efficient will adjust for sun availability and strength so you can compare to the power output (really annual energy production) of a conventional near 24X7 plant.
I’ll bet you end up with a figure like 100-150MW, which is equivalent to a pretty dinky coal plant.
It can “peak” at it’s full rating, which comes at a handy time of day – during peak AC load. That’s one good reason to do it, still.
Seems like a non-solution to me in that case, all it does is to shift the environmental costs upon a particular part of the biosphere. Time to go back to the drawing board as far as I’m concerned.
Come up w/a way to divert the birds and plow ahead. It’s all about comparative triage.
Birds are pretty smart anyway, word will get out. When all the Crows died in my geography from the Asian avian virus, what 7 years ago?, they have been loath to repopulate the area. I think they know it’s was a mass Crow death zone.
I was thinking bird training maybe. I’d do it if it paid money. There was that old story about the prisoner dude that bet the King he could train a horse to talk within a year. One way to make some bucks until the Fed ever raises interest rates.
But then, given time, maybe the birds learn all by themselves?
I was thinking in terms of surround the place w/ animatronic Dick Cheneys shooting pneumatic blast shotguns. Scatter some bloodied & wounded animatronics around for effect.
Ya! Robot Scarecrows!!! Maybe scary flying robots too? Colonel Sanders Blimps? Ultrasound perimeter?
They aren’t workin’ this problem hard enough.
Bacteria too.
With their ‘language,’ they tell others to pass on antibiotics resistant genes.
I half-jokingly suggest the use of balloons with tinsel as warning buoys.
If you insist on a cheap solution, I’d say at least get some clowns that now how to make balloon animals and make eagle balloons. Then add the tinsel. I bet there are enough convective currents in the Mohave to tether the balloon to a rotating crankshaft and get some wing flapping action too.
Or give them something to do before they fly across the panels; water source, or food source. (I actually wonder what the biological consequences of a large solar array are, and whether there are beneficial plants, insects, or even animals that would be appropriate.)
Our bio things seem to be pretty mobile. One annoying thing the utilities found out a long time ago was when they built man made cooling ponds, a bio community moved to the pond. They then were told by environmentalists they needed to put in cooling towers to lower the water temp so it would be cozy for all the creatures trespassing on the utilities man made pond. I don’t that think ever went anywhere, thankfully.
In this case it’s in the Mohave – so not a lot to disturb. Bet the rattler population increases due to waste food and water, however. Then if there are eagles in the desert there, maybe the eagle balloons are not such a good idea.
So this would require some more study, but our energy choices are quite limited.
What that tells me is that we need to consume less, not expand capacity to allow for increasing consumption. And why is it that when we destroy a pristine habitat we call it development, but when wildlife moves into man-made ponds we call it trespassing?
Actually we have to consume less AND change over high carbon sources to low and/or zero carbon sources. It will be difficult. Actually the conservation part is easy, and if they closed Vegas so they don’t need this plant, that would be fine by me, but no one ever asks me these things. The supply side from new low carbon sources is the nearly impossible part.
Then they tell us it’s life or death for the planet, so it’s like optimader says…triage …and some rattlers and scorpions may have to die.
This is messed up. Why is it that even humanity’s good intentions are disastrous for other species?
I strongly suspect that this is not an insurmountable problem (as in, “Hey the weather vane glares in our eyes, burn down the barn!”). Also, if one does any sort of comparative analysis of harm across all or multiple species, I suspect this place and most “renewable” industrial scale sources of energy production would win hands down in comparison to their counterparts in oil/coal/gas, especially, if one takes extraction/production/delivery and consumption into account for each.
The problem with the Ferguson killing, much like Zimmerman etc., is the eagerness to know exactly what happened so we can pass collective judgment on whether the boy should have been slaughtered or not.
That’s not the point. The big story here is that law enforcement and criminal justice having no credibility in minority communities.
Mr. Pace;
Seeing how “Law Enforcement” is an equal opportunity oppressor now, might I suggest the change of ‘minority’ for ‘marginalized?’ If poorer people of all races and creeds found common cause, they would be in the majority.
Right on, and that’s the point of the interesting Abdul-Jabar article. When I think of my own relation to the police, though, as a white guy on the edge of middle age, it’s clear to me my interaction with law enforcement is a lot different than these black boys that keep getting slaughtered.
Maybe I’m too far into the middle class and out of touch with the marginalized people of all races, but I have always sensed a rather widespread complacency among the racial majority about the police.
That of course is what you’re talking about though, as people start to realize they are not in the populations that law enforcement is meant to “serve and protect”.
From your lips to the lips of those who live in poor regions. The area I live in is full of poor whites. Poor enough that my evening walks were peppered with routine stops that resulted in varying rounds of 21 questions(until I got tired of it and told them I would no longer be playing games and answering questions with them or handing over ID). When SWAT visited my neighbors one of the things one of the officers told a neighborhood resident was that if she didn’t like the fact that they were throwing flashbangs that she shouldn’t live next to people who sell and do drugs. That’s the mentality my neighborhood (which has a mix of whites, AA, and latinos) deals with. The only thing I have found that has been effective in combatting it is pushing back.
Word.
Remember “jury nullification” and the OJ Simpson trial? Brown people have a VERY different experience of “the authorities” than white people. (That said, I’m white, and I do all I can to avoid any interaction with the NYPD, as every interaction has been thoroughly distasteful. Granted they never shot me.)
Yea notice those who critique the protestors and sympathisize with the cops, emphasis we don’t know the facts of this particular case, and that it should be up to a jury and not protestors to determine. Actually that is no doubt true in theory since very few people have the time to look into it in depth (and a jury would), and we are getting nothing but different spin every day (brown family spin and cop spin, left spin and right spin). But they careful sidestep the probability of getting a fair trial when a cop is the defendent. They carefully sidestep that fact that people likely protest because they have seen people unjustly attacked by cops EVEN IF this particular case wasn’t a case of that. If you regularlly see cops killing and attacking people in your community, and it happens again, what would you do but protest? Would they prefer it if you just meekly die?
I do wonder what the cop kill rate is in that community? By which I mean how many people have cops killed there?
But at least people meekly submitting to be killed or injured by cops gone wild wouldn’t lead to riots and other gastly things /sarc
The thought that the people of Ferguson could set up a People’s Tribunal has crossed my mind.
If someone shot a police officer 6 times, or more, would the police treat the shooter the same way that they are treating Darren Wilson?
Re: Germany
I noticed some articles about Germany spying on the US:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/16/germany-spied-john-kerry-hillary-clinton-der-spiegel
Today there are articles about Germany spying on Turkey:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/turkey-summons-german-ambassador-bnd-spying
Is there a “subtle” campaign going on against Germany?
I enjoyed my Trans-Atlantic crossing many years ago and do not foresee another one any time soon.
I think I should be OK.
Turkey seems to be a fickle “partner” lately; perhaps the stick for Germany is also the carrot for Turkey. “Streaming” two birds with one mirror, as it were.
a needed chuckle for Lambert…Thanks for sweating weeks of awesome links!
Know Your Rights! Things To Keep In Mind When Dealing With Police
We rely on the police to keep us safe, but let’s face it: We can’t always rely on them to tell us our full rights. Here are a few things to keep in mind during your next run-in with the law:
1. A police officer on a horse cannot arrest or fine you if you are also on a horse.
2. If you challenge a cop to a race, he legally has to race you. If you beat him, you are the cop.
3. If you’re eating a bag of pretzels and pass by a police officer, you’re not obligated to offer him one, although it certainly would be a nice thing to do.
4. If you forfeit your right to remain silent, make sure you say “off the record” before revealing anything incriminating.
5. If you get arrested, ask to sit in the front seat. You’re not a fucking child and you deserve respect.
6. If you ask police officers if they’ve ever tried weed, they have to say “no,” but they can wink after saying it.
7. If a police officer asks to cut in while you’re dancing with a partner, it is legal for you to cut back in at the top of the next hour.
8. If you punch a cop, he gets to punch you back—but then you’re even.
9. If you see a cop whose uniform is all red, that means he’s evil and will help you with crimes! Make use of his expertise and long, sharp fingers.
10. If you’re stopped by a police officer, simply answer any questions truthfully and try not to remember that he could beat you to death with absolutely no consequences.
http://www.clickhole.com
I once had a police officer on a horse pin me against a wall, while I was standing on a sidewalk at a protest. Another police officer, on foot, came along and asked the mounted officer if he should arrest me. She said, “Sure.”
I should have brought my horse!
I should have brought my horse!
brought a pin.
How many police officers can dance on the head of a horse pin?
* I once had a police officer, who was on a horse, pin me against a wall…
I’d just like to thank you for the post on New Plant Language. It is genetic code exchanged via RNA from the 2 plants talking to each other whereby molecular information is shared in the service of symbiosis, or parasitism. Interesting. Wonder if we could develop a cure for diseases like war-mongering if we communicated at the molecular level like this.
I was watching this documentary ‘Vegucated’ over the weekend and it was enough for me to think about going vegan (maybe).
But if plant languages exist, I think I will be a little queasy about eating vegetables.
re New Plant Language Discovered
This is such a facscinating ( if unsurprising, really) post. the air around us all aswarm with a veritable kaleidoscope of smells and colors and tastes that we are oblivious to, a vast and roiling sea of floral and faunal chemical molecules all silently buzzing all around us….posts like these are my anecdotes to the day’s oft depressing links. thank you.
and re the post, “Dodder may be telling the host to lower its defenses and allow it to drain nutrients.”
Or maybe, get the f*ck off me?
Science is gradually moving us into the view that we live in a universe permeated by consciousness. We are gradually seeing the re-enchantment of the world.
I had a great conversation with an elder Ent once, but I won’t tell you where it was because if too many people went there it would mess things up for him and his forest.
One species of bacteria sometimes transfers genetic material to a different species. This can be considered a form of communication, but It’s a big stretch to say that it’s language. Similarly, I don’t think the plants are using language. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer
Correct Vatch..
“Communication (from Latin commūnicāre, meaning “to share”)” . Computers communicate, that does not imply computers are sentient..\
Language does imply Sentience,
Plants are not sentient, so it is an improper use of the word Language..
Irony alert :Paul Singer may do more to address TBTF than all the global regulators combined.
Argentina is threatening to yank CITIs banking license if they don’t release payments to the bondholders.
That would cut CITI down a peg TBTF wise
Argentina is also threatening prison for the bankers involved.
http://nypost.com/2014/08/18/citibank-could-lose-argentina-banking-license/
I have a certain amount of respect for Craig Murray, but when he describes the Labour hating, above the line anti_Millband trolling guardian as newspaper as a “neo-con New Labour propaganda vehicle” I have to wonder what decade he’s living in. The last one, I think.
And he seems surprised that one of the biggest papers in the UK is following orders from MI6. FFS.
Thanks so much for the link:
Inside the Grand Jury: Why Texas Governor Rick Perry Was Charged with Two Felonies.
It is an antidote to the article by Amy Davidson in the New Yorker. Gives the why that is the real reason for the indictments: Perry was afraid of the state ethics committee and for good reason.
“so we can pass collective judgment on whether the boy should have been slaughtered or not.”
Exactly. Too many words spent on forensics, DOD equipment and quibbling about appropriate use of (police) force. The salient thing here is that a community of black people is ten days into a confrontation with armed-to-the-teeth police willing to kill people for the most trivial of reasons. A community that has lived with this kind of treatment their entire lives, long before the killing of Michael Brown.
It takes a lot of courage to stand with black skin in front of a line of robocops saying “hands up, don’t shoot!” A young man said on video “I’m doing this for justice, I’m standing up for everyone in this country.” By night, it’s mostly young people, some of them seen looting stores. By day it’s everyone, woman, children, elders, demanding justice for Michael Brown, and for a people subjected to a lifetime of institutional abuse. Their courage is an example to the rest of us.
PS: WTF is up with the photos I saw of bulky, muscular black-garbed, masked white men throwing tear gas canisters back towards the police? Have any of them been arrested?
It would take courage to do what they’re doing even with skin lacking melanin, as it didn’t seem much of a deterent with what they did to some Occupy people. It’s profoundly courageous non-violent protest fully worthy of MLK or ghandi.
“PS: WTF is up with the photos I saw of bulky, muscular black-garbed, masked white men throwing tear gas canisters back towards the police? Have any of them been arrested?”
Black bloc? I don’t actually know. Or infiltrators?
Occupy, brutalizing white folks, true. Being black makes it riskier.
Even the douchbag left focuses mainly on police brutality, forensics, and DOJ response, etc.
They have great trouble seeing people as history makers, instead of subjects for their crappy interventions, charity pitches or PBS specials.
Michael Brown is a tragedy.
The people of Ferguson are history.
The Ghandian analogy is apt.
“WTF is up with the photos I saw of bulky, muscular black-garbed, masked white men throwing tear gas canisters back towards the police? Have any of them been arrested?”
I am hereby instituting a new protest chant: “Arrest the police.”
More genteel than what we usually hear, but also more to the point.
a convoy of eastern ukrainian referee was attacked with mortars and missiles leaving dozens dead. both sides blaming the other, though i heavily suspect kiev
NSW Government Plans to Give Business 2 Votes Each in City of Sydney Council Elections. (Business Insider, not The Onion) This is a declaration of war, isn’t it?
Why stop at two?
Why vote?
Vote Here.
Why would they?
This 2 vote thing seems to indicate a cutting of the Gordian Knot: 2 votes allows voting for both evils, evil and its lesser, thus avoiding compromising choices.
Latest scuttlebut says Fernand St. Germain died.
For anyone interested in the stink presently wafting across New Zealand’s green and pleasant pastures and leas I recommend:
http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2014/08/14/gordon-campbell-on-nicky-hagers-new-book
(The US and the Republicans get a mention, just in case you think it too parochial!)
Mission accomplished comrades: Europeanss and Americans’ views toward Russia sour dramatically. http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2014/07/PG-2014-07-09-Russia-Favorability.pdf (PDF file). Check out the year over year change tracked by the graph on page 3: the unfavorable opinion toward Russia exploded in the US and in Europe, while increasing much more modestly in the rest of the world. The propaganda machine is incredibly efficient and effective comrades, and it has accomplished what it set out to do: use the US-instigated neofascist coup in Ukraine to drive a wedge between Russia and Europe. Divide et impera.
Oh just because it’s typical fare around here, the usual bashing of optimists, and hailing pessimists:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/18/robin-williams-mental-health-and-social-insanity/
It is interesting Robin Williams had Parkinsons. In some sense I don’t think it’s for others to judge a person’s right to take their own life. And the hysteria pushing mental health after RW’s death was just that. It’s something that always amazes me about this country is how prone people seem to be to collective hysteria and jumping on bandwagons. RW’s death is all about jumping on the mental health bandwagon. Like 9-11 is all about flying flags on your car. Just like the SB killer was all about mysogyny. Everything becomes a crusade, nothing just is. And it’s not that we don’t need social change, but I’m not sure bandwagon jumping is going to get us any type I would want.
Mental health, I think it can sometimes help. But just pushing it as the magic answer betrays so much magical thinking, betrays not thinking at all but rather handwaving. I think in part people do that because they don’t want to think about people that are depressed for instance and they just want magical mental health people to handle it – out of sight, out of mind. Problems like depression (even if one doesn’t have physical health problems) are incredibly complex. Mental health might really help but it might not, and it might taking trying a dozen different mental health approaches to find one that works.
As for whether one’s problems are social or persona, there seems to be a lack of nuance, none of these writers mention how even old Doctor Freud just wanted to reduce people to the background level of misery, he didn’t aim to actually make them happy. If one has misery beyond the background level of misery for their class, race, circumstances etc. then maybe it is personal and due to thier childhood etc. etc. (even though this society definitely does not help one in recovering from whatever personal problems they may have). But failure to get rich or something isn’t personal, it’s just the overwhelming odds.
‘Bulgaria halts South Stream gas pipeline project for second time’: ““Minister of Economy and Energy Vasil Shtonov has ordered Bulgaria’s Energy Holding to halt any actions in regards of the project,” the ministry said. This specifically means entering into new contracts.” http://rt.com/business/181136-bulgaria-halts-south-stream/
In a completely unrelated, coincidental development, ‘F-15s, troops from 493rd deploy to Bulgaria’ http://www.stripes.com/news/f-15s-troops-from-493rd-deploy-to-bulgaria-1.298819#.U_JjpVvOKwE.twitter.
It should be noted that the Soviets never stationed troops in Bulgaria.
interesting post: “Since it is impossible to directly destroy flagellates without potentially disastrous consequences to the environment, what can be done to knock out ebola at the source? If its reservoir is found in the figs of te ficus family, nothing can be done short of leveling the rain-forest. The reservoir microorganism is probably not inside fig tree due to the fruit’s powerful enzymes and the overwhelming presence of yeast, which crowds out flagellates from access to sugar.
If, instead, the flagellate’s host tree happens to be a relatively scarce species, it can be cut down inside ape sanctuaries and around villages. No reservoir, no trypanosomatid, no ebola, it’s that simple. Long Live the Planet of the Apes.
Postscript: This writer later conveyed the facts about the viral-promoting aspects of chlorinated water to WHO officials, who showed absolutely no interest in such analysis. In their conventional viewpoint, chlorine is sacrosanct as the main method for sterilization of water and hospital rooms worldwide. The WHO shipments of vast amounts of chlorine to Africa could be promoting viral mutation and consequent infections rather than suppressing the epidemic. The first modern outbreak of Zaire ebola, as discovered by Peter Piot and his colleagues, was near Bumba, the terminus of a rail line, where the water supply was chlorinated and the local Catholic clinic used chlorine to sterilize its facilities. The conclusion is simple: water should instead be treated with filtration, reverse osmosis and nano-tech photocyde to lower the probability of viral outbreaks.”
http://www.rense.com/general96/didebola.html
abynormal,
I understand bats are targeted as the likely host reservoir for the Ebola virus. Bats have been a common denominator in Ebola outbreaks that have been studied, but researchers have yet to be successful catching and isolating the infected bat equivalent of a needle in the haystack. Ebola is not a waterborne virus, so not sure the efficacy of water chlorination is relevant?
Bárðarbunga volcano in Iceland – 2800 earthquakes in 3 days:
http://www.visir.is/2800-earthquakes-in-three-days/article/2014140818954 English
http://www.visir.is/naestum-3000-skjalftar-a-thremur-dogum/article/2014140818955 Icelandic
Warnings have now moved to orange. (No Time magazine, it is not the same volcano that erupted in 2010)
English updates are available on one of TV networks in Iceland.
http://www.ruv.is/volcano
IMO monitor
http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/vatnajokull/#view=map
Breaking Icelandic news!
http://grapevine.is/news/2014/08/18/girl-falls-asleep-on-bus-wakes-up-locked-inside/
“After dozing off on the bus ride home on Saturday night, an Icelandic girl woke up to find herself alone in the dark and locked inside, reports DV. Presumably the bus driver did not spot the girl before locking up the bus for the night.
According to the Metropolitan Police, the girl called her father after realising she could not get out, who in turn contacted the police for assistance.
The police arrived on the scene shortly after and freed her, sparing her from a bus sleepover”
I’m puzzling why the police weren’t obliged to shoot her five or six times???
Oh yeah..
still waiting for the frikken volcano to erupt….
http://grapevine.is/news/2014/08/18/growing-likelihood-of-eruption-at-bardarbunga/
Maybe the local police should all take a turn shooting it?
Over the last few days the blog and comments threads scroll down slow and jerkily. Has anyone else noticed this? If not, it must be an artifact of my machine or system or something. If yes, is use so high that blog is slowed down? Is there a sustained attack of some kind going on? ( In a way, that would be a tribute to somebody’s fear and hatred of this blog).
Links to more sources in English
http://grapevine.is/news/2014/08/18/growing-likelihood-of-eruption-at-bardarbunga/
3d model animation
http://gfycat.com/FaithfulRipeIntermediateegret
Things are getting nasty in Ferguson. Amnesty International was ejected by the police.
Anyone want to lay odds on 5 or more nations enacting sanctions against the US for this by 12/31?
Who says voter strikes don’t work? Not TIME Magazine, desperately soiling itself in a bid to bolster the legitimacy of the deadwood government of their own construction: http://time.com/money/3117303/vote-lottery-cash-prizes/
Matt Ridley is still stuck in the real silly season: the 1990’s. Back when Julian Simon was taken seriously, and Fukuyama was busy bending history so that BoBos like Ridley could dabble in futurism in between cabrides with Tom Friedman.
Good God, what a bloody fool.