By Lambert Strether of Corrente
Shootings in Ottawa
Shooter’s mother in statement: “You write that our son was vulnerable, we don’t know, we (he) was lost and did not fit in” [HuffPo].
Shooter acted alone, say Canadian officials [New York Times].
Shooter acted alone [Globe and Mail].
Which won’t prevent Harper’s government from deploying long-prepared legislation destroying Canadian liberties in Parliament [The Intercept], because terrorists (Harper) [Foreign Policy], re-running the PATRIOT Act play that worked so well for us. Prompting “Why does Glenn Greenwald hate democracy?” response from Heritage “scholar” Brookings “fellow” [WaPo].
Which won’t prevent our famously free press from deploying the usual framing: “Terrorist ideology blamed in Canada car attack” [WaPo]. I know the battle to avoid a crapfest of Orwellian language on this topic is long lost, but “terrorism” is a tactic, not an ideology. “Drone strike ideology blamed in wedding party splatterfest” would be just as solid, analytically.
More elite framing: “In the West, a Growing List of Attacks Linked to Extremism” [New York Times]. Whatever “extremism” might be.
Hong Kong
What is the Hong Kong government waiting for? [Asian Correspondent]. It’s quiet. Too quiet.
Protest banner on Lion Rock [WSJ]. More pushback; police filming Occupation sites.
Chinese tourists take protest selfies [Daily Beast]. “Sun and his wife took turns taking pictures of each other in front of Lennon Wall.”
On translating “umbrella” [Asian Review of Books].
UN Human Rights Committee gives Hong Kong grade of C1 (of A through E) [France24].
Media critique of Hong Kong pro- and anti-protest coverage, with chart of investment on mainland by Hong Kong media moguls [WSJ]. The lead: “Hong Kong lumbers through its fourth week of pro-democracy protests.” “Lumbers?” I’d say our own media is gettting bored. Poor babies!
“New reports confirm US role in HK politics” [China Daily]. But check the (hilarious) sourcing.
Stats Watch
Jobless claims, week of October 18: “Trends remain favorable though initial jobless claims did rise” [Bloomberg]. Subtext: Permanently higher disemployment is the new normal. Those who are out of the labor force will never return.
Consumer sentiment, week of October 19: Highest in seven years. Confidence in < $50,000 earners increased by the most since November, but fell among > $100,000 after rising for five weeks [Bloomberg].
Leading Indicators, September 2014: Up by an “outsized” 0.8 percent. “Low interest rates were the major factor contributing to the strength” [Bloomberg].
Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Index: Up modestly [Bloomberg]. “Firms continued to note difficulties in attracting and retaining certain key workers, particularly machinists and welders.” If only there were some market-based solution for this! What could it be?
Ebola
West divides aid to West Africa along colonial lines [Bloomberg]. “Médecins sans frontières,” people. Get it?
A fraction of the money spent on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars would prevent ebola, and epidemics like it [Asia Times]. So simple a child of six can see it. So somebody get me a child of six.
Patients avoiding Texas Presbyterian [ABC]. Any managers fired yet? [I crack myself up sometimes!]
Ukraine
Timeline and explainer on Ukraine’s “unfinished” ‘revolution” [Reuters].
“New breed” of Ukrainian politicians in upcoming elections [Bloomberg]. Hunter’s runninng?
2016
Elizabeth Warren’s Unsherman Statement becomes even more Unsherman-like [Salon].
Warren on Clinton: “We have talked. It’s not much more than that. Not much more” [WaPo].
Krugman floats Clinton-Warren trial balloon [HuffPo].
“Warren’s silence was Fidelity’s gain” [Boston Globe]. Let the oppo begin!
2014
Democrats start blaming Obama for anticipated mid-terms disaster [Bloomberg]. C’mon, let’s be fair. They’ve got to blame someone.
Cuomodammerüng
Siena poll: Cuomo overwhelming favorite, but may do worse than 2010 if Green’s Hawkins does well [New York Daily News]. Greens could also win the coveted “Row C” on the ballot, knocking down the Conservative Party [Syracuse Post-Standard].
Preet Bharara on Moreland probe: “We have the files, we have some of the smartest people in law enforcement continuing what was begun and that’s what we care about” [New York Post]. Asked when the probe might be finished: “You’re assuming there’s one investigation” [Buffalo News].
Cuomo’s doorstop sells 945 copies so far [HuffPo]. Some PAC must have dropped the ball on the bulk sales. Can’t anybody here play this game?
In actual TV debate with Republican, Libertarian, and Green candidates in Buffalo, Cuomo says his fracking review will be conveniently finished after the election [Democrat and Chronicle].
Imperial Collapse Watch
Shocker: Many negative findings stripped from public versions of USAID audits [WaPo].
Shocker: CIA successfully evades oversight from toothless Senate yet again [HuffPo].
Shocker: Dead civilians ignored as Obama quietly closes the books on the lost war in Iraq [WaPo]. Of course, the war was “won” in the sense of creating a massive self-licking ice cream cone of profitable chaos for private enterprise in the years to come. So there’s that. Perhaps, in the era of the market state, that’s what passes for grand strategy.
Former NSA chief Keith Alexander speculated in commodities [Foreign Policy].
Why he was engaged in commodities trades, including trades in one market that experts describe as being run by an opaque “cartel” that can befuddle even experienced professionals, remains unclear.
What’s unclear about it? And how “opaque” would the cartel have been to NSA surveillance? I’ve long speculated that information arbitrage would feed the black budget billions; and so much safer and more profitable than drug-running!
News of the Weird
- “Twitter will never, and should never, have any credibility with developers again” [Marco.org].
- “Facebook launches Rooms to anonymously share common interests” [USA Today]. Sure. I totally trust Facebook on that.
- Have we reached peak Google? [Stratechery]. Gawd, I hope so.
- Fake classes for athletes at the “University” of North Carolina pervasive. Ugly [Business Week].
- Chinese province to shut down 881 sites involving excavation, demolition, waste transportation, and other activities that generate dust, so APEC attendees in Beijing will be able to breath [China Daily].
- Observations of daily life on the ground inside North Korea [Asia-Pacific Journal].
- “A pink slip for the Progress Fairy” [Archdruid Report].
Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And here’s today’s plant (Bleeding Heartland):
White prairie gentian in a prairie patch at Whiterock Conservancy in Iowa last month.
Talk amongst yourselves!
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Gregory Cochran (author of “the 10000 Year Explosion”) on so called Experts:
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/the-experts/
“In 2003, the ‘experts’ ( politicians, journalists, pundits, spies) knew that Saddam had a nuclear program, but the small number of people that actually knew anything about nuclear weapons development and something about Iraq (at the World Almanac level, say) knew that wasn’t so.”
Re: Canada’s PATRIOT ACT. Australia is doing the same. Just like us. Greed and fascism. The Blue-Eyed Devils have run amok.
You mean that the Five Eyes might have some untended political problems (aside from the moniker straight out of V for Vendetta)? Or is this just more white-on-white crime?
I wasn’t aware of the Five Eyes Program. That is good to know. Thanks. So far, they are on a roll but it doesn’t seem sustainable on any level.
When even Israeli defense ministers suggest the eventual but inevitable demise of the West-failian system (Moon of Alabama), oh dear oh dear oh dear.
Ya’alon is a racist, fascist fool, but he’s right that the artificial borders of artificial countries are unsustainble. This lesson should have been heeded in Africa, but wasn’t. Things have straightened themselves out from Somalia to the Sudan through an awful series of wars recently; and West Africa wasn’t gerrymandered too badly to start with; but central Africa has ruinous colonial borders which have caused nothing but trouble.
If Harper led your government wouldn’t you want to shoot it up? Not that most actually would of course. I blame it on the radicalism inspired by a right wing government.
But the
statePope is infallible.So Harper is going for the sympathy vote now: poor Harper, those “terrorists” are making his life miserable!
Man, I am so fed up with this government and especially its leader. What he is doing is so obvious. I had to turn off the TV because of the non-stop “analysis” of what is going on. Note to Harper: if you war monger then war will come to you. I guess you felt left out when Canada didn’t go to war in Iraq in 2003; now you have your very own war and an innocent soldier has already paid the price for your stupidity.
I hope there are enough savvy Canadians out there that won’t let let you get re-elected in 2015.
Patients avoiding Texas Presbyterian [ABC]. Any managers fired yet? [I crack myself up sometimes!
That will only happen after the patient care accounting forensics document a pattern of lost billing opportunities w/ patients that s(c)hould have been retained for +23hour observation at a higher billing rate
http://www.ihatoday.org/uploadDocs/1/observationstayguidelines.pdf
If the layoffs of nurses, technicians, janitors, and food service workers haven’t started, they will soon. The article says that the parent company has $3 billion in cash, so they won’t have to lay off any managers for a while. Okay, maybe some low level managers will be cut loose, but none of the big shots.
A Clinton-Warren ticket? For years, I’ve known that the Clintons are malodorous. And for years, I’ve been ever so grateful for their introducing Rahm Emanuel into American politics. But the article in Harper’s, “Stop Hillary,” is a list of just why no one should be voting for the Bill&Hill Empty Suits. Just the Goldwater Girl mention is enough. [And how would Elizabeth Warren survive the DLC scrum?]
The VPOTUS is generally the sleazy influence cashier. What sort of veep would Warren make? Would her great purpose in office be to restart the Great Game for the Levant once again? What’s her angle?
A Clinton-Warren ticket?
Absurd. Consider the source. I do think Warren may run, however.
Warren would probably win the Iowa caucuses, then win the New Hampshire primary. I can’t see beyond that, but Hillary would have to play catch up. I know they are talking, probably about what Warren would take to go away, but Warren would do well to remain uncommitted. If Hillary falters, the torch could pass to Warren in an instant.
“Sherman Statement”:
Rules out everything, right?
Warren is not making Sherman statements. In fact, she is making Unsherman statements.
Celebs explain economics.
http://www.openculture.com/2014/10/we-the-economy.html
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-23/biggest-threat-america
Good point, Frank….
Hat trick of Reuters links:
o Exclusive: U.S. plans to plug coal royalty loophole padding export profits
The real question is, how many new loopholes will they open up at the same time?
o Reporter quits Chicago newspaper, says governor candidate influenced paper
WWBBD? (What would Ben Bradlee do?)
o Alabama man gets $1,000 in police settlement, his lawyers get $459,000
Paging Saul Goodman, Esq…
Oh, I think they are going to plug those loopholes.
The fossil fuel industry hasn’t realized that it’s fallen out of favor. The following dynamics have happened:
(1) There are some smart people in the corridors of power. They understand that unchecked global warming is game over for them and all their wealth and power. They know they have to stop fossil fuels, self-interestedly.
(2) The “new tech” empires like Google and Amazon are run by people who have no attachment to fossil fuels (but a strong attachment to solar/wind/hydro). They are a money and power base which is capable of fighting the fossil fuel types to a draw… so far.
(3) The investment/finance (rentier) types have figured out that oil production isn’t profitable any more — the necessary breakeven prices are crazy high — and they see the writing on the wall for all fossil fuels. They’re bailing out (while there’s still a bigger fool to buy their stock) and moving into renewables, in hopes of owning/controlling/profiting from that.
Note that this is pure self-interest, greedy capitalists and power elites, in action. Doesn’t require any altruism, just a hard-headed view of the world.
Another stat for you Lambert: http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap
Still almost 47 million Americans on food stamps, despite attempts to cut some from the rolls.
That’s a good stat, thanks!
Please, Mr. Ringmaster, may I have some more bread?
Of course the WaPo will go to to former RAND employee Drezner for its national security state propaganda.
~
Well, the government is trying to figure some way out of this mess.
The government claimed today that the students had agreed prior to the talks through intermediaries that the concessions offered at the talks—sending a supplemental report to the NPCSC and “consider[ing] setting up a platform for dialogue on constitutional development” (which sounds absurdly vague)—would be enough to get them to stop protesting; Hong Kong Federation of Students’ general-secretary Alex Chow denied (plausibly, to me, at least) that there was any such agreement. That all sounds like the government trying, and failing, to take the higher moral ground—but the more important point is there are probably all sorts of back-channel negotiations (including not only the students but university presidents, who called for talks to continue, and other players) about which we know nothing.
And the poll that everyone is citing, showing growth in support for the Umbrella Movement, is from before the talks this week. Given that the students made an impressive showing and the government, whose basic position is “We’re powerless” (while acting with a fair amount of complicity with Beijing), offered only minor concessions, I’d be curious to see if, in fact, support has grown even more.
Lastly, here’s a more expansive take on the Cantonese words used for the Umbrella Movement.
I think, based on my theory of history, that the important question is whether there are major upper-middle-class elements connected to the student protests / pro-democracy movement. If there are, the power elite in Hong Kong faces a fight which it cannot win; its choices are to concede more democracy, or to crack down violently with foreign troops from Beijing. The latter would destroy Hong Kong’s economic position worldwide and reduce it to a fishing port: in sports terms, an “own goal”.
Doing some further research, it sounds like the Beijing attempt to suppress the local language (Cantonese / Yue) is causing such severe resentment that the upper middle classes are firmly on the side of the students. So that answers that question.
If there are not, the power elite in Hong Kong can wait out the students and get away with it.
This is the “gentry (upper middle class) are key” theory of history. It’s kind of unsettling, but there’s a lot of evidence for it.
Here we go. NYC’s turn.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/23/health/new-york-possible-ebola-case/index.html
Viral terrorism will not be negotiated with [!!!].
Bomb Saddam!
So the weapon platforms are to be piloted by Dennis Quaid… cunning plan if I do say so…
Musical sound track suggestion – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UPaT6ltDs4
skippy… apropos album name Aperitif for Destruction!