Plants Know When They’re Being Eaten and They Don’t Appreciate it Inhabitat (furzy mouse). So now I have to feel guilty about eating plants? :-(
The Best Places to Be an Expat Wall Street Journal (Li). Almost certainly a list for rich expats.
Ghosts in the machine language Economist (David L)
New studies: ‘Conspiracy theorists’ sane; government dupes crazy, hostile Veterans Today (furzy mouse). Underlying study: “What about building 7?” A social psychological study of online discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories. PubMed
Armstrong barred from non-competitive race Xinua. Psychohistorian: “I find it interesting that the following is available on the Xinhua english news web site but is not available at Google news nor available through any Lance Armstrong News search.”
Ebola
Christie and Cuomo Announce Mandatory Ebola Quarantine Time (furzy mouse)
Ebola tests pending for health care worker in New Jersey Chicago Tribune
India’s vulnerability to Ebola a crisis in the making Bangkok Post.
Most New Yorkers Aren’t Freaking Out About Ebola, So You Shouldn’t Either Huffington Post.
Pain Begins to Spread as China’s Home Prices Fall for Fifth Straight Month BusinessWeek
Australia baulks at China bank sign-up Sydney Morning Herald
The journey from luxury to thrift will test Beijing’s mettle Financial Times
Mortgage scheme offered to rice farmers to delay supply to market Thai Visa (furzy mouse)
About 25 Eurozone Banks Said to Fail Stress Tests
As Europe Stagnates, Everyone Is Begging Germany To Embrace Its Inner Keynes And Start Spending
French unemployment hits new record high France 24
London’s luxury housing market freeze intensifies Financial Times
Putin unleashes fury at US ‘follies’ Financial Times
Ukraine
Ukraine-Russia reach gas ‘consensus’ BBC
Why sending weapons to Ukraine would be a terrible idea for the US Quartz
Syraqistan
UN wants to battle Islamic State, but is it fighting freedom? Globe and Mail
The War Nerd: How do you deal with wannabe jihadis? An upgrade to business class Pando
The Kobani Riddle Pepe Escobar, Asia Times (Mark Twain)
Imperial Collapse Watch
The Unraveling Foreign Affairs. A bit leisurely, but even with making some overly-charitable-to-the-US recaps of recent events, it still paints a picture of US ham-handedness.
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
European Privacy in the Age of Snowden: We Need a Debate About What Intelligence Agencies Are Doing Democracy Now
Days After Shooting, Canada Proposes New Restrictions On and Offline Slashdot
Warrant: CHP officer says stealing nude photos from female arrestees ‘game’ for cops Inside Bay Area
5 Ways Falling Oil Prices Are Helping the Economic Numbers Wall Street Journal
Minimum Wage: Scott Walker Based ‘Living Wage’ Ruling On Restaurant Industry Study International Business Times
Maine regulators allow sale of town’s water to bottler of Poland Spring Portland Press Herald. Boycott Poland Spring. Of course, you should already know that bottled water is environmentally a really bad idea…and not healthy either if the water has been in the plastic long enough.
Chronic Pain and reflections on this blog One Salient Oversight
Class Warfare
Setting Up The Students anotherquestion, Firedoglake
The 1% are more likely to vote than the poor or the middle class, and it matters – a lot Vox
Lunch with the FT: Russell Brand Financial Times
Antidote du jour (Frog OTD, courtesy Lambert). Hope you don’t feel like this today!
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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I take it that, of US citizens in the USA, Ebola has still killed fewer than Teddy Kennedy?
I don’t know about Ted, but definitely way fewer than Ronnie Raygun, Bill “Black Dress” Clinton, or The Bush Gang.
I meant literally killed, not metaphorically.
Is it more ‘directly vs. indirectly?’
out of curiosity how do you metaphorically kill someone… as opposed to literally?
In the ascension of evilness, is manslaughter by a drunk more evil than premeditated metaphorical killing of thousands?
Just trying to get a sense of proportion to calibrate my metaphorical outrage.
Ambrit meant literally killed also. Do you think people are killed in wars only metaphorically?
You’ve seen the post floating through facebook:
More Americans have been married to Kim Kardashian than have died from Ebola.
Teddy Kennedy? Really? The guy’s been dead himself for 5 years, the drunk-driving incident your referring to happened in 1969 and one person died, and Ted Kennedy — withball his warts — spent pretty much his entire life fighting for the Middle Class and the Poor. Maybe it’s time for you to find another punching bag.
“The War Nerd: How do you deal with wannabe jihadis? An upgrade to business class”: that was pretty much my reaction to the Canadian business too. Every time a mad, evil young man wants to leave the country to Die For A Cause, give him a cheery wave and let him go. Good riddance. As long as you use Brecher’s corollary: don’t let them back in without arresting them. Or handing them over to the American Inquisition.
let these idiots go, or they will kill “at home”….a Darwin award to all of them!!
Goal!
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/25/fourth-british-jihadist-dies-portsmouth-isis
If a man has no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbors!
Let him think of the glory of Greece and of Rome!
And get knocked on his head for his labors.
To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,
And is always as nobly requited
So battle for freedom wherever you can!
And, if not shot or hanged you’ll get knighted.
– Byron
For what it’s worth:
Byron died of pneumonia fighting Ottoman rule in1824.Though Byron enjoys hero status in Greece, he was shunned in Britain. Westminster Abbey in London refused to bury his remains in its Poets’ Corner because of his Bohemian lifestyle.
Don’t you think that “Bohemian lifestyle” is rather a mild allusion to his incest?
The closest historic parallel is the International Brigades (IB) during the Spanish Civil War. Canada also banned her citizens from fighting in this conflict although around 1500 made it through and fought anyway — only about half died. The survivors eventually made it back — it is not possible to outlaw their return, unless you strip their citizenship which advanced civilized countries like Canada wouldn’t do. But their IB survivors were given the fascinating label “premature anti-fascists” and had trouble getting work or serving in the military.
So if you cannot ban them from coming back then you could have some pretty serious problems. I have not heard of much crime committed by the returning International Brigadists; but France has had two bad cases of returning Jihadis: Mohamed Merah killed seven people (including three children) and Mehdi Nemmouche who killed three people (at the Jewish Museum in Brussels). Denmark has taken steps to welcome back returning Jihadis with promises of counseling and job training. My cynical take is that this is a pretty good way to keep them in the system and thus under the watchful eyes of Danish counter-terrorism officials.
A similar phenomenon are “Jewhadis” — Westerners who volunteer to serve in the IDF. David Brooks’ son is the most famous but apparently there are at least a 1000 Americans fighting for the IDF. Elite young men want the excitement of war but it is too prole nowadays to join the US military so they join the IDF. Rahm Emanuel served twice as a civilian volunteer for the IDF; once during the 1981 Gulf War. It certainly didn’t hurt his employment prospects.
Interesting comment about the International Brigades. In the USA, they certainly were discriminated against, although it was hard to deny them some due. After all, they chose Abraham Lincoln as the name of the brigades, and they were widely supported by U.S. unions and the left. The cases of jihadis and supporters for Israel are a bit less clear. And it bears mention that many volunteers go to Israel in secondary roles to free up man/womanpower for the IDF. I know someone who was a volunteer on an ambulance crew. (Hard to imagine in the U.S., and now, come to think of it, hard to justify.) In short, it isn’t just a matter of whose ox is being gored. We should try to keep people out of the gang fight that the Middle East has devolved into.
I agree 100% for the reasons you state
But also seriously, you use to be able to be a communist in this country. If you wanted to emigrate, you could leave, and it was NOBODY’s business what your motivations were.
re: antidote
“someday we’ll find it…”
I think it’s one of them Hypnotoads
there are Blue strains of marijuana… ex Blueberry & Blue Cheese
uh no mom, i ate a barrel of blueberry’s (everyday)
“When you look at the dark side, careful you must be. For the dark side looks back.”
Don’t stare into the abyss – probably a different translation.
No, the Midi-chlorians definitely stare back. Highly voyeuristic, little known fact.
“Man, he said it was Mr. Natural! No way!”
re Maine regulators allow sale of town’s water to bottler of Poland Spring
Unelected officials hand a valuable public resource to an odious corporation and screw the community together with the environment (bottled water is not just bad it’s an environmental disaster, and a great public con).
No surprise there, I guess, but jeesh…and this public water privatization/theft likely to spread to other towns…and then there’s the potential of a lawsuit by Nestle (“the world’s largest food and beverage company”) because Profits if any attempt at reversal of their 25 year deal with renewals occurs in the future. Because Free Trade.
But nestle reassures: the new contract provides Fryeburg Water with a predictable revenue stream…good to know the public will have something to drink from.
I do hope there is a court appeal, a last-ditch attempt to block this…
With respect to bottled water: I started drinking it exclusively about 15 years ago. Why? Because my city happens to get its water from well operated by a private water company and it tastes awful. The law requires them to send each customer a yearly water quality content report listing everything in the water besides, you know, H2 & O. The list runs three pages, small print. We have to wipe down all the faucets after every use or they corrode like mad. The joke is, our water is so hard you can walk on it.
Go to any of the adjacent cities, water comes from various other sources, tastes fine.
And I tried to filter thing: took lots of crap out of the water, didn’t improve the taste one bit. Nor did it seem to cure the corrosion problem to any great degree. I spent my early years in Portland, OR and yearn for a glass of its fabulous-tasting water from the Bull Run river.
OK Yves, the moment of truth is rapidly approaching. I have read some of your posts over the years about your feelings on some vaccinations. The question now is, when an Ebola vaccination is developed, how many fatalities in New York will it take to nudge you into reversing course and getting a new, not-thoroughly-tested vaccine for a disease such as Ebola?
Your question reflects a lack of understanding of who is at risk of getting Ebola. It’s people exposed to Ebola patients when they are dying, as in health care workers and potentially family and/or people exposed to the body if the person does not die in a hospital. The disease is blood borne. You need to be exposed to bodily fluids of the person who has Ebola, and even then bodily fluids that contain particles of blood. The big risk of contagion is when they are dying because the disease course makes them basically dissolve into bloody vomit and bloody poop. They expel most of their bodily fluids in the course of dying.
No one in Duncan’s family appears to have contracted Ebola. Of eight nurses treating him in a hospital whose protocols were so bad that it may have made their odds of infection worse, only 2 got sick (the use of duct tape, which almost assured they’d get any small amounts of Ebola goo on them on their hands when removing it, which then means there is a high risk of getting it in your eyes or mouth by touching/rubbing your face, which people do all the time). Even with that, the two who contracted the disease weren’t wearing key pieces of protective gear! As a doctor at Emory, which was where the two US doctors who contracted Ebola and were flown to the US to be treated, wrote:
The two nurses now have been confirmed that they were not wearing masks or goggles for two days while taking care of Duncan while he had projectile vomitting and bloody diarrhea. No doctor has become sick yet at the facility since their contact is casual…the poor nurses have to clean up the poop, vomit etc. All it takes is getting a drop on your mucous membranes…
Remember, in 100 years of microbiology not a single virus has mutated from being fluid/blood transmission to airborne. It’s why we haven’t panicked about AIDS and Hep C becoming airborne. With airborne transmission you don’t have to have direct contact with the patient ( eg. TB and Flu ) However, if you cough and sneeze a large amount of respiratory fluids and someone else unmindfully touches it and makes it to their mouth or eyes, there is a possibility of transmission. there was some initial panic with pigs potentially getting the ebola airborn but that has been debunked. I believe there was a case of HEP C via large respiratory droplets from coughing ( which contained microdroplets of blood). I used to be chief of infectious disease at my hospital when we had no ID specialists. The gowns and gloves used for contact isolation, if not taken off in the right order, (and it is not as simple as ripping off the gloves and gowns) can cause a serious breech of contact isolation
The authorities keep mentioning that it might be possible to get it via airborne means. Please read what the Emory doctor said. This is bending over backwards to be cautious. That a very small number, perhaps as few as one which is in doubt, of cases of Hep C being transmitted that way. With Ebola, given the way patients die, the transmission vector is close contact with the dying victim.
Firestone was able to beat Ebola in Liberian town:
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/beating-ebola-one-companys-fight-liberia-shows-how-do-it-n230961
“the use of duct tape, which almost assured they’d get any small amounts of Ebola goo… on their hands when removing it”
FWIW, when a glove is taped over the outside of a suit sleeve cuff, the tape doesn’t need to be removed to peel off the suit w/ the glove attached, (I tried it at work to satisfy my own curiosity – a tyvek suit w/ nitrile gloves pulled over the cuff and taped)
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/piltdown-medicine-and-andrew-wakefields-mmr-vaccine-fraud/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?s=wakefield
They used duct tape to cover their necks, as in directly on their skin in lieu of being given gear that covered their necks. The cover equipment they got in the Dallas hospital left their necks exposed. This was tape on skin, not tape to seal various part of the coverings together as a extra precaution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_cod
After the blue pot course.. to be followed by the blue cheese and blueberrys
Clearly the Blue Cod misposted, delicious buggers in any case
I recall reading this a while back.
I give Fatu the Mother of Invention moxy points for the year
http://www.talesofsuccess.com/fatu-kekula-fighting-ebola-22604/
From today’s links:
===================
She had no symptoms upon arrival at the airport but developed a fever Friday evening, the New Jersey Health Department said in a statement. She is now in isolation and being evaluated at University Hospital in Newark. The agency gave no further details.
CNN reports the woman is being tested for Ebola.
“Voluntary quarantine is almost an oxymoron,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said. “We’ve seen what happens. … You ride a subway. You ride a bus. You could infect hundreds and hundreds of people.”
Besides medical workers, anyone else who had direct contact with someone with the virus must also submit to a quarantine for 21 days, Cuomo said.
“It’s too serious a situation to leave it to the honor system of compliance,” Cuomo said.
The announcement came a day after Spencer, a 33-year-old New Yorker, was diagnosed with Ebola at a city hospital soon after returning from Guinea. Spencer had been working with Ebola patients in the hard-hit West African country for the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders.
“He’s a doctor and even he didn’t follow the guidelines for the quarantine, let’s be honest,” Cuomo said.”
====================
http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/health/chi-ebola-new-york-20141024-story.html#page=1
Also as well then on a completely different subject, interesting factoid on your Blue Cod post. They can change sex! That would come in handy if you get horny, doncha think?
What say we blatantly take this out of context to the point of bald lying, and repeat this over and over again as if he were talking about Wall Street?
Wall Street Quarantine:
http://observer.com/2014/07/can-the-ritz-brand-carry-a-118-million-condo-in-battery-park-city/
Ebola Quarantine; http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970204346104576637721637145808#2
Q: How do you quarantine a Wall Street banker for everything?
A: Lock him up in a bank vault with a harem of 12 virgin Victoria’s Secret girls.
“Lock him up in a bank vault with a harem of 12 virgin Victoria’s Secret girls”
If it were a Just World he’d be gay.
It isn’t.
“interesting factoid on your Blue Cod post. They can change sex! …
…would come in handy if you get horny, doncha think”
They’re only Blue before they change sex…also less popularly known as “Any Port in a Storm Grouper”.
Actually this unsettling bit of behavior is not that uncommon w/ fish
thanks for the link to the Firestone Liberia story; very encouraging
Further, we should be throwing money into these small African countries to nip the epidemic there. Then there would be a need here only to vaccinate health-care workers, as Yves points out. Further, a link here pointed out that the disease seems to move along areas damaged by the civil wars–and Sierra Leone and Liberia just had civil wars, while Mali is in the midst of something like a civil war. So we should oppose endless war as foreign policy. These are the things that first-world people should be doing, not trying to reenact DeFoe’s Journal of a Plague Year. (Although it might help all of us to dip into Camus’s The Plague to stiffen up our backbones a tad.)
If a vaccine is developed it will become a condition of employment for front line medical personnel, and, if safe and effective and if warranted, for all hospital staff. This is already the case for many other vaccinable diseases. This is to protect the staff, but also their patients and outside contacts.
Of course “conspiracy theorists” are more sane than those who promote and defend government-sponsored explanations: conspiracies happen to be an every day fact of life. That’s how the world works, in fact. You’d have to be pretty delusional and out of touch with reality anyway to buy the word of a bunch of known liars anyway, as those who believe government/corporate propaganda do.
It’s nice to see that believing government lies is much less common and acceptable these days than it was in the past though–and that acknowledging that government is composed of a bunch of self-interested liars is now the norm. It seems many others are going through the same awakening process that I myself did a few years ago, and are consequently now better able to protect themselves for it.
Anyone who has read extensively in history understands that history is often deeply intertwined with plots, conspiracies, double-dealing, false-flag events and so on. Anyway, it’s common sense–in a society like ours which values “success” rather than honor, material riches rather than virtue why wouldn’t people conspire together to beat the system? It seems insane to me that intelligent people in the USA in particular actually still believe either that (like Henry Ford) history is bunk or American is the grand exception.
The assumption in the USA is that the media is our political watchdog and they do our job. The reasoning goes like this–well, of course if they could find a spectacular story they would blast it to us loud and clear therefore JFK, RFK, MLK, 9/11 and so on were all just as the government said in every last detail. But that is not how the American mass media operates at all–great stories are not pursued if they step on sensitive toes–it not only doesn’t happen, structurally the editorial boards are made up so that it can’t happen. Should it happen, for example, Christian Parenti reporting that people in Baghdad were saying that the main problem in the early days of the Occupation was the corruption by U.S. contractors and officials he was sharply rebuked by Lehrer and told he was banned from his program and everywhere else presumably. Also, when the foremost expert on Iraqi WMDs, Scott Ritter, was brought before some execs at CNN he was told if he gave his honest opinion he would not be allowed on ANY TV show and so he was airbrushed from history. To put it simply, the U.S. mainstream media is virtual Ministry of Truth and a division of gov’t not a watchdog. At best, it has a set of interests and points of view that differ somewhat from, say the National Security State, but it’s only a matter of shading–it is, in fact, just another of the major power centers which we all know that rule the country.
So, unless you understand the true rule of the media you have to believe all the utterly ridiculous stories about 9/11 and the assassinations because you assume, even if they are flawed, they can’t be THAT flawed. Well they can be and they are if you look at the evidence–and that is my main point and has been here for some time. Those that accept the conventional explanations on these events will not look at evidence–like Lambert says it is all “hairballs” meaning that there are claims and counter-claims too complicated and arcane to talk about. Now, when I bring up the most humorous and astonishing facts about, say, the RFK assassination, i.e., Thomas Noguchi’s autopsy report (never entered into evidence in the Sirhan trial) or the very rigorous sound analysis of the gunshots (at minimum 13 shots out of a 9 shot revolver) he refused to acknowledge it even when challenged on it–why? I’m guessing because NC does not want to seem like a home for “conspiracy theorists” those crazed men and women who live in basements who have dropped too much acid or whatever. The stunning thing about all this is that the evidence in all the events I’ve mentioned for the official story is laughingly bad–the gov’t didn’t do that good a job of covering it up. The story is obviously false–there is simply no logical argument based on evidence for the official stories of those events–just a lot of suppositions based on no evidence. I don’t know who was responsible for any of those famous and critical events but I do know that the official story isn’t just false it is almost entirely fictional because, in the JFK assassination, for example, decades of evidence has been accumulated that is very easy to go through.
But people refuse to look at evidence if their world-view would be demolished–that’s a well known social-science finding that goes back half-a-century or more. What if we believed the assassinations were carried out either by government operatives or that government operatives covered up evidence implicating alliances between the USG and, say, organized crime, or other foreign intel agencies? What then? How could we go about this farce of a political drama that the mainstream media puts on for us? How? How could we take seriously anything official? We would be duty bound, as per Confucius that paragon of order and discipline, to overthrow or cease recognizing this government because it was not legitimate. That’s why the majority of the left, who should have been on the conspiracy bandwagon early on (some were), like Chomsky and his ilk, decided to turn their face away from evidence-based reality and swallow the blue pill.
I think the rock bottom reason ‘respectable’ commentators foam at the mouth about “conspiracy theories”is that the ramifications inherent in open and honest discussion about stuff like 9/11. It means that the governmental machinery and state military-intelligence apparat are occasionally hijacked for the ends of elite factions. Like any psychopaths, they look us in the eye and dare us to do something about it. Because really, who’s gonna win that one? General Alexander, Allen Dulles and co….or us?
“[T]he governmental machinery and state military-intelligence apparat are occasionally hijacked for the ends of elite factions.” Mercy! Say it’s not so! I mean, that’s the “rock bottom” reason?
well… I think so anyway. If it isn’t, like Chomsky says, “institutions” screwing our heads to the floor and massacring nuns, then actual powerful and connected individuals might be culpable. People who have dossiers on the sexual peccadilloes of members of parliament and congress and are happy to suicide annoying journalists. It’s like I wandered into an episode of The Rockford Files.
Well, of course they do. There is nothing new about any of this. This is why I puzzle at the wonderment shown by so many CTers.
On a separate note, I can’t find the Terry Pratchett quote where he distinguishes foaming at the mouth from foaming at the brain. No personal reference.
‘He’s mad, isn’t he?’
‘No, mad’s when you froth at the mouf,’ said Gaspode. ‘He’s insane. That’s when you froth at the brain.’
No, I ‘foam at the mouth’ (actually I usually just sign and move on) about 9/11 conspiracy theorists because they don’t know anything. Or rather most of them don’t know anything and just parrot whatever nonsense they come across, while it’s very clear a dedicated core just flat-out lies and fabricates evidence. What about Building 7? It collapsed exactly as the experts say it did. The video everyone references showing it collapsing in a different way was edited to cut out the beginning of the collapse, which rather inconveniently doesn’t line up with what the conspiracy nutjobs claim. Another, related claim is that no other buildings that weren’t hit by planes were damaged, which is also a lie; the Verizon Building was badly damaged and cost $1.4 billion to repair, and the Deutsche Bank Building was so badly mauled they simply dismantled the whole thing rather than attempt repairs.
I really get very tired of people referencing examples of past conspiracies like Gulf of Tonkin and using that to essentially claim that any conspiracy is true, or at least possible. Tonkin was sketchy from the start, and also not terribly sophisticated in its lies. A 9/11 conspiracy is about as likely as the Moon Landing being faked. The logistics of it would leave evidence and leaks all over the place. The reason 9/11 ‘truthers’ focus so much on laughable things like thermite residue (and of course not one of them understands even the most basic fundamentals of thermite) is because they can’t find anything more solid.
Very well put Banger. I would dispute only this; The “society” we participate in, does not put material riches over honor. Our’s sees the fictional construct of those that wish to mold thought and action to their liking. “Our” society doesn’t participate in the other.
Great comment.
On that note. I’m not sure which demonstration of velocity was more impressive- the fast-tracking of the controversial surveillance legislation (bill c-13) through the Canadian parliament on the day of the shooting or the well-coordinated “terror” script delivered by the people on the TV. If I was a college kid I’d surely invent a drinking game where every time a CNN talking head said the words terror, terrorist, radicalized, muslim, or jihadist, you pop one back. Probably best to wait for the 6 o’clock report.
“If the U.S government could assess a “terrorist” attack on Canadian soil before the Canadian government was aware, then why was it not prevented? On the same token, if the Canadian government was in the middle of mayhem, then how did Americans obtain information that wasn’t available to affected bureaucrats from their own intelligence and law enforcement agencies? What powers does America have over Canada that Canada doesn’t have itself? If a shooting on government property can be solved before it’s even finished, then why wasn’t CSIS, CSEC, DHS and the NSA capable of early intervention? After all, the Wednesday shooter was already placed on the government’s watch list.”
http://freethepresscanada.org/2014/10/23/government-passes-anti-constitutional-surveillance-law-during-ottawa-shooting/
Wow, that was fast!
People don’t storm the winter place or the Bastille or occupy anything because one elite faction whacked another elite faction back in the day. They do storm the winter palace for “Peace, Land, Bread,” or “The Union,” or to end intolerable injustice as they experience it in their daily lives. That’s what legitimizes or delegitimizes a regime.
As those of us who have read extensively in history know.
Sinking energy into 40-year-old hairballs about events the truth is highly unlikely ever to be known is a distraction, a complete waste of time, energy, and bits.
I don’t begrudge people their hobbies, of course; some people like to theorize on JFK; others like to build model railroads. Considered in the right light, it’s all good.
You don’t think having a (real) criminal investigation of the 911 tower demolitions would be a worthwhile cause?
Accountability is like rain—everyone knows they need it, but no one wants to get wet.
What good would it do? A few scapegoats get whacked, a few too big to whack have to give sorry-not-sorry apologies on TV and return to their power-brokering, and the system itself doesn’t change one whit.
I puzzle why anyone would think a POTUS ADMIN that could only muster the sophistication of: “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, blah blah blah” could also the same Team that organized what would amount to histories most extravagantly complex false flag multiple demolition operation (as opposed to a rather straight forward blunt instrument hijacking plan by a group of morons ) AND then kept it a secret!
To be clear, you contemplate these same bozos that did the Iraq War 2
then handed this unprecedented politically radioactive bag of sh*t off to the next POTUS ADMIN for safe keeping?? Does that about sum it up?
Seems beyond absurd.
But they are not the same team. POTUS admins are front of house and only know what they need to know and can be trusted not to ask questions about what they don’t, which is one reason why they are there in the first place. They change, the forces that drive them don’t.
There are hands inside those puppets.
“the forces that drive them don’t”
Can you identify any individuals that presently (or in the past) compose “the forces” and maintain a continuity of information and policy agenda that the POTUS ADMIN advances without being privy to?
Good question!
To be clear, I agree that the ‘bozos’ did not, indeed probably could not, pull off something as complex as 911. My position is the same as R Brand’s – don’t know who did it but don’t feel I can trust what I’m officially told. That such a view is so widely held is a clue as to why people can entertain theories that seem outlandish; i.e., if the explanations are suspect, they must be hiding something.
I’m responding more to the idea of POTUS admin agency that seems to be embedded in this:
‘To be clear, you contemplate these same bozos that did the Iraq War 2 then handed this unprecedented politically radioactive bag of sh*t off to the next POTUS ADMIN for safe keeping??’
This seems to assume that imperial efforts overt and covert would not have some elements that would be handed over from admin to admin – but bipartisan secrecy re certain ongoing projects would surely be quite common.
The evidence of continuity in the contours of US policy (foreign, military, economic) over decades indicates priorities that transcend whether the red or the blue team is in office. And there must be many thousands of people employed in prosecuting various aspects of said projects… what are all those hundreds of thousands of intel agency employees that Arkin found with top secret clearance doing? Could Congress or even the President and his admin team find out, or would there be areas off limits even to them?
That is the sense in which I see hands inside puppets – not a few sinister tycoons or shady spymasters (though both are present, and given recent revelations it appears not a few of the latter are beginning to merge with the former) , but a whole community or family of communities engaged in projecting American power and protecting American interests (however defined) over the long duree, the identity of government at any given time making some difference of course to this aspect or that, but not to the overall trajectory. New admins only make their own appointments to a limited range of roles, leaving plenty of scope for continuity.
Take the e.g. of the Germans discovering that the US was spying on everyone in leadership down to the head janitors and office managers. Obama hemmed and hawed and donned some sackcloth, but how responsible was he personally for any of that? How much did he know before it blew?
Time was you could make assumptions about the responsibility of particular admins for particular atrocities or embarrassments because they had agency, they had control, in a way that no longer applies. Things happen now and admins and POTUSs seem just as clueless as we are, as they assay apologies and scramble to come up with crowd-pleasing solutions.
I look at Obama and I don’t see a President in control. That may be down partly to personality but its surely also an index of how the POTUS and his team have over time had the spheres they can influence radically reduced in size and number.
I think the energy required to get that done would be far better spent elsewhere — were it to be possible. I think it would take a movement far beyond the normal political process to get, say, a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” and a movement of that scale has better things to do with its time, for reasons I point out above.
I’m not going to say much except to say that is an insulting comment particularly to the thousands of researchers who have tried to help us understand the nature of the power structure. You may disagree but it is not in the least like building model railroads. 9/11 happened a 13 years ago and is the direct cause of the most dramatic loss of civil liberties nglo-Saxon jurisprudence has encountered in its history. Due process and habeas corpus have been thrown out now that we are under a permanent state of emergency in a war that can never, theoretically, end. 9/11 has also been responsible for massive deaths of American citizens including from toxic discharges that the gov’t refused to consider. Then, there are the wars of the past decade which were directly and indirectly responsible for hundreds of thousands of death of people we don’t consider worth counting as well as trillions in tax moneys paid out to largely criminal enterprises who pretended to fight these wars (I mean the contractors who were the main beneficiaries of this fraud). We had better be goddamn sure of what happened on 9/11 before we accept the government’s story based on practically no forensic evidence only government assertions of what happened that the media, like it ALWAYS does, as I presented above, did not bother to investigate any part of the 9/11 attacks. I re-iterate here that I don’t know who performed this act but it clearly did not happen the way the gov’t described it if you actually look at the evidence because no investigation has been done based on real evidence other than what gov’t spokesmen testified to during the 9/11 report that even the hacks who headed it admitted lied to them.
You may not think murdering one President, his brother who would be Prez and perhaps the greatest progressive leader since Eugene Debs means nothing but I was there in the midst of the political situation and I know what it did and what followed and can tell you the left died forever after that. That’s pretty important. You can disagree with me and present the offical case for 9/11 and say I’m wrong on the facts but don’t insult those of us who have spent countless hours pouring over the records and facts on these matters. This is to denigrate history as Henry Ford did and one of the main causes of the inability of Americans to learn from the past as we are always just born yesterday. You have everyright to deflect this sort of discussion but this sure seems like ad hominem to me. And no offense, Lambert, you do a wonderful job on this site, I’m just calling it like I see it.
Learning nothing. Walks, protest of the war, nothing changed except the murder of a few protesting college students.
What changes things is private justice when used in the right time an place.
You are absolutely correct that the government explanation of these events cannot be trusted. And there is certainly value in understanding, as best as possible, the forces and causes actually involved in them. I, too, was involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements, and everything did change after 1968.
But, my understanding of Lambert’s comment is that the job of regaining the rights we have lost, fighting the plutocracy, increasing the social safety net, etc., is a higher priority than figuring out exactly why we lost the rights, or the plutocracy came to power, etc. We know enough of the why’s to get on with working to change things.
And, I don’t see anything that indicates that Lambert accepts the government explanation or wants you to be wrong on the facts (at least in today’s comments).
I accept any explanation from the political class (a subset of which runs the government) with reluctance, as I think most readers can see.
There is history, and there is woolgathering. What, exactly, do you propose that one learns about history by going down the 9/11 rabbit hole that is actionable, today?
I see no reason to assume that US and Saudi elites weren’t behind it and that the lot shouldn’t be summarily strung up for it, to a person. What has demolition wankery to add to that?
John LeCarré has a great phrase (pace the religious) that covers this: “We don’t need to prove that Christ was born on Christmas day.”
To me, the notion that CT hairballs are going to delegitimize the state is ludicrous. Hammering on the role of the banks, the thefts and injustices and indigntities of every day life: That’s what delegtimizes a government.
During the Great Fear, when the feudal era was ending in 1789, the peasants burned, physically burned, the land records that made feudal rental extraction possible. Now that’s a loss of legitimacy. CT is basically the Parisian pamphlets and songs lampooning and demonizing Marie Antoinette for her secret dealings with her Austrian relatives by comparison. Good, clean fun, and certainly well-deserved, but froth compared to what the Lords did to the peasants.
The only “CT hairballs” are the people who still believe the preposterous, totally unscientific explanation for the course of events on 911. The “investigation” was a whitewash from the onset as admitted by its own members. It’s amazing to me how hostile people become when completely rational questions are raised about a rather momentous crime.
When cases are reopened and innocent people are released from prison, does that cause you great discomfort too?
“9/11 happened a 13 years ago….. …for hundreds of thousands of death of people.”
—Your above rhetorical introduction are non sequitur relative to government conspiracy/coverup of 9/11
:
“…the thousands of researchers who have tried to help us understand the nature of the power structure..”.
–Argumentum ad populum –a proposition is claimed to be true or good solely because many people believe it to be so.
” we don’t consider worth counting as well as trillions in tax moneys paid out”
—not relevant to how 9/11 transpired, unless your suggesting “contractors are the invisible hand??
“…to largely criminal enterprises who pretended to fight these wars”’
—The US military was given a hopeless objective.. btw is not a criminal organization, but it can be argued unconstitutional orders handed to them. As for the “contractors”, that’s everything from caterers to Blackwater to Lockheed, none of whom “fought” the war(s). They were support.
“We had better be goddamn sure of what happened on 9/11”
–Impossible objective, everyone will never be satisfied, that obvious enough.
“based on practically no forensic evidence”
–Wrong
” I re-iterate here that I don’t know who performed this act”
–ultimately irrelevant whether you know or not
” but it clearly did not happen the way the gov’t described it if you actually look at the evidence”
–Unsupported claim (consistent with what typically follows the prefix “clearly”)
http://www.jod911.com/drg_nist_review_2_1.pdf
http://www.debunking911.com/index.html
Adding to what you said… We already know enough to know that the State and large parts of civil society are criminal enterprises. That’s what the combination of accounting control fraud, the trillions of bailouts, and the administration’s failure to prosecute tells us.
So which would you rather focus on? The largest upward transfer of wealth in world history, or thermite? Or the single bullet theory? Take all the time you need…
Hey, it’s a free country. If people want to waste time on side issues, have at it, say I. I do notice that you fail to address the key point:
So, like I said. CT is for hobbyists. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
The problem with conspiracy as an explanation is that it goes against the kind of thinking represented by Ockham’s razor. Too many causes. Too many interested parties sworn to silence. The attacks on the WTC towers took place in a culture where no one seems to be able to shut up. My surmise is that the towers were not built to code. Bad concrete. Bad specs. Bad inspections. But it was a glamorous project, so it had to be approved. The truther/skeptics always talk about the other tower that collapsed, the one that wasn’t hit. Not built to code, either. As someone pointed out here a few days ago, simple carelessness (and fecklessness) is what is dragging further into this new baroque.
Yes, unfortunately reality seems to go against Occam’s razor (reality has an anti-Occam’s razor bias?). I mean one wouldn’t think as many people would be able to keep quiet about the NSA opening computer shipments as MUST have to make the whole thing possible. But that’s what the Snowden leaks have told us must have happened.
On 9-11 I tend to split the difference, terrorists brought it down, the Bush admin, intelligence agencies etc. knew this would happen and let it (based on their intelligence work). This is not entirely conspiracy theory as they certainly ignored at least some of the warnings, that much is entirely uncontested. I’m just saying it was probably deliberate and there’s a good chance they knew the entire plot and let it play out.
“I mean one wouldn’t think as many people would be able to keep quiet about the NSA opening computer shipments as MUST have to make the whole thing possible. …”
How many actually?
“…But that’s what the Snowden leaks have told us must have happened. ”
Oh, so it leaked out then? Maybe not such a good case study for the long term fidelity of gvmnt conspirators ?
LIHOP vs. MIHOP. You say tomato…
Do you have any research on the “not built to code” claims? There are a couple thousand engineers, architects, and demolition experts who have put their careers & reputations on the line to raise some quite serious issues with how the buildings collapsed. I will be happy to pass along this important piece of data to them.
Never attribute to conspiracy that which is adequately explained by perverse payoff matrices, class interests and/or progress narratives.
Heh. I like that. Not sure “progress narratives” (the archdruid?) is in the same category as the others, though. Polish “Hunkerdown’s Law” a little, perhaps?
The long-term, growing disenchantment with intolerable injustice is, as you point out the deep historical cause of revolutionary upheavals. But the immediate trigger of an insurrection can be something small, even trivial. The storming of the Bastille only happened as it did because of a combination of coincidental factors, not the least of which was the inept behavior of the Marquis de Launay.
Your statement only reinforces Banger’s point. Even a cursory examination of the publicly available facts reveals that the official report on JFK is bunk.
Attempting to understand a pivotal event in the development of our current post-historical paradise is none of these.
Also, as a student of history you know very well that 40 years is a blink of the eye in terms of digging out the truth of events.
“Even a cursory examination of the publicly available facts reveals that the official report on JFK is bunk”
oh?
Well, I’m happy to leave that work to hobbyists, as I say. Have at it!
Banger, I usually am taken with your views, but I can’t abide with the cant “Chomsky and his ilk.”
I don’t get it–what do you mean? Chomsky flat out refuses to accept contrary narratives as do most radical leftists–what am I supposed to say–be more polite? Yes, Chomsky has provided us with unique insights and is a valuable and imposing intellectual presence but he is not untouchable nor is the rest of the left that has largely failed in the U.S. to have any influence, rather it has gotten decidedly weaker with each decade.
It was clear that Chomsky didn’t want to examine 9/11 rationally or even consider the logic of alternative theories and rebuttals, not that he had examined and then dismissed them. That was deeply disappointing. It must be that certain truths, even self-evident ones, are too unspeakable, too culture-shattering, heart-rending and soul-destroying to be even thinkable. Levels of dissonance that induce total paralysis are desperately avoided.
Chomsky was totally correct to point out that US policies in the region were ultimately the cause. He doesn’t like the idea that people in the boiler room can take control of the ship.
I’m sure most of you have seen this, but for those that haven’t – it might help make up your minds about 9/11. It’s a good refresher on what most likely happened and brings some truths to light that were never addressed.
“To put it simply, the U.S. mainstream media is virtual Ministry of Truth and a division of gov’t not a watchdog.” The reality is a bit more complex. The MSM will spin events, create false narratives, and ignore events to foster the corporate interests of the handful of media conglomerates. So, when considering militarism they will always cheerlead for endless war and whatever else is good for the U.S. MIC bottom line. Yet people in the MSM will very often counter the narratives of powerful politicians, even the President, whenever those narratives are somehow offensive to whoever is paying the bills at Fox, MSNBC, etc.
In other words, there isn’t a simple unified “party line” that one can deduce from watching the MSM. Nearly all MSM narratives do tend to support a bankster-friendly world view, yes. Different elite factions are more or less sympathetically treated on NPR or Fox News. Your basic point, that the MSM tells people what the powerful want them to hear, is correct. Yet powerful people have disagreements, and these divisions are sometimes evident in the MSM.
Often the MSM seems more concerned with distracting people from reality– with any bright shiny object available– than anything else. The residents of a city that has been decimated by de-industrialization are given the opportunity to forget their own sorry lot– and worry instead about Miley Cyrus.
Are you suggesting that people sometimes make plans in private? That’s just crazy-talk…
It’s much worse than that. Sometimes they make plans based on their interests, which are not always readily apparent!
I rarely engage in talks about deep state political events such as 9/11. Most peoples knowledge base is so limiting as to render discussion more or less pointless.
I respect how NC is generally not dismissive opinions on the various events but at the same time is not a forum where the details of those events are to be hashed out—nice equilibrium.
From the Veteran’s Today article:
—-Psychologist Laurie Manwell of the University of Guelph agrees that the CIA-designed “conspiracy theory” label impedes cognitive function. She points out, in an article published in American Behavioral Scientist (2010), that anti-conspiracy people are unable to think clearly about such apparent state crimes against democracy as 9/11 due to their inability to process information that conflicts with pre-existing belief.—
I spotted this at the NYTimes this morning: Flood of Early 401K Withdrawals
Groups like Fidelity don’t undersatnd $60B pulled out of 401K Plans? Willful blindness at its finest.
jcc, I suspect many are taking money out of 401-Ks when they have lost a job or had a major medical bill. When Elizabeth Warren studied bankruptcies, she found these were the primary reasons. This may also help scrape up the down payment for a home. This needs to be studied.
Big sign of distress. Wait, I thought the economy was doing great?
There have been a stream of articles about India’s vulnerability to ebola. But it is the United that got 4 cases, the highest number outside of the three West African countries that are hot spots. The only other country with an ebola case is Spain, with one case. And most of these cases were health care workers.
Meanwhile, the latest WHO situation report shows that the provision of additional emergency treatment centers in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, and the increased staff available to track the contacts of current cases are beginning to show results.
In short, this is a crisis that can be managed and controlled by providing sufficient infrastructure within the countries affected, an idea that used to be common sense in the US but today seems fringe and radical amidst the panic of the news media.
Im assuming that only the plants themselves know theyre being eaten, and not their fruits, which is designed to be eaten?
As a big fruit eater, im sort of hoping my grapes dont cry whenever I knock off one of their mates.
So people, eat less kale and cabbage, that cries when you eat it. Take an apple instead, whose sole purpose in life is to be eaten.
Well, eaten by something other than you, but whose counting?
Reminds me of the religious sect (Buddhist monks IIRC) who avoid stepping on grass because they will damage the organisms living in it. Surely, the only way to avoid doing harm to all organisms on Earth is not to be born.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t exercise compassion.
A good question for the Dalai Lama –
“How many bugs died on the limo windshield on your way to the airport tonight?”
Interesting you should mention him.
Apparently he’s getting out of politics, perhaps forever.
The DL isn’t that kind of Buddhist–in fact, I don’t believe Buddhists generally believe you can’t harm small organisms–some Jains do.
If they don’t believe so, it will be interesting to know why.
Why are small living beings, or organisms, different from bigger living beings?
Thanks, Banger — yes, I think it was the Jains.
I don’t believe that ‘Buddhists don’t believe’ that harm doesn’t occur. my bet would be that his kind of Buddhist believes that life itself contains suffering of one kind or another inherent in it.
just guessing.
Jains are definitely cognizant of small living beings. Grew up knowing that I shouldn’t harm the smallest creatures amongst us. Which is fine except I grew up in NYC and killed many cockroaches.
it was their destiny.
Needed that!
I believe you are thinking of the Jains, although there may be some Buddhists who are similarly cautious. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa_in_Jainism
Oh; I see that others have already mentioned the Jains.
We are dealing with ‘quantum morality’ here…lots of paradoxes, counter-intuitive stuff.
Simple rule: “Plants are people too!”
And go more refined from there.
In any case, thinking over the cruelty the next time you chew a carrot – you are killing it alive.
And that’s pretty cruel…unless you are one of the few people in the world who have read and actually understand Relative Quantum Morality.
Fruits are like sex organs…you only part with them reluctantly.
My belief is that, in the beginning, it was involuntary – better a sex organ than a limb, as our animal ancestors ravaged the plant world.
To fruiting plants, the evolutionary strategy, this adaptation, is ‘the lesser of 2 evils.’
The Reason There Has Been No Sustainable Recovery
“When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done”
John Maynard Keynes
How can an economy based on printing money and financial repression for a broken financial system achieve self-sustaining organic growth?
Where is the growth in aggregate demand fueled by a growth in employment and an increase in median wages?
Is the great mass of the public thriving, or barely surviving?
Why do we insist on blaming and denigrating the victims of a massive and ongoing financial fraud that after six years is still largely intact?
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-reason-there-has-been-no.html
25 October 2014
Yellen’s Big Trickle Down Dilemma
Why is the economy so sluggish?
Even if real wages are stagnant, and consumers are tapped, the Banks have been saved and stand ready to loan from an abundance of freshly created money (that they can obtain for almost nothing).
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2014/10/yellens-dilemma.html
Yellen’s solution is to put consumers in more debt??!! Twisted. That’s saying there is no real economy, only a bank issued credit economy and that creating bubbles is the real economy so get with it.
I think that’s exactly what the plan is. Debt-slavery.
“That’s saying there is no real economy, only a bank issued credit economy…”
You can’t possibly be just realizing that are you?
All money is loaned into existence. Every dollar loaned into existence MUST become at least $1.05 and in fact because of the dominance of the FIRE sector, in order for our economy to operate it must become somewhere around a $1.50. If people are not borrowing the economy is dying.
Way more than half our economy is money making money or outright fraud and extortion. In other words not a real economy by any stretch of the imagination .
No, I know what you’re saying Eeyores, my ears are hurting from it hearing it from Yellen is all. A very sorry admission from the Fed.
BTW – got this is in the mail today : This is simple: Bankers on Wall Street need to follow the law – and when they don’t, they should be held accountable. For that to work, regulators in Washington and New York need to enforce the law – and when they don’t, they should be held accountable.
Join Senator Sherrod Brown and me in calling for a Congressional oversight investigation into issues raised by the Goldman Sachs tapes.
We can keep making the rules on Wall Street tougher and tougher, but it won’t make an ounce of difference if the regulators won’t enforce the rules that are there. We need to get to the bottom of this.
Thank you for being a part of this,
Elizabeth
One possibility is that most of what we think we know about economics and banking is invalid. If the banks are not actually making loans, there is a reason. If they are loaning to some people or businesses, there is a reason. The fact that we don’t know what it is, is a sign that we should find out.
“Plants Know When They’re Being Eaten and They Don’t Appreciate it Inhabitat (furzy mouse). So now I have to feel guilty about eating plants?”
It would be more interesting (but less clickbaitable) if the writer’s use of “know” and “appreciate” conformed with the definitions, as this use implies sentience.
When make believe definitions are used then the language looses meaning.
I have a smoke detector that “knows” whenever I cook and doesn’t “appreciate” it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GS2rxROcPo
Michio Kaku: Consciousness Can be Quantified
Opti, we may think we know what the word ‘know’ means, for humans, or perhaps not.
Moreover, animals and plants may ‘know’ differently, in ways we are not currently able to detect nor quantify, than humans do.
So, here is a chance, perhaps, to expand our living dictionary.
My guess is that, as a living being (a reminder, vegetarians are plant-killers), a plant ‘experiences’ in some sense*, the process of its sudden, unusually quick, corporeal disintegration.
Even if they can’t ‘know,’ they are undeniably living beings. And to eat them is to kill them (one draws one’s own moral conclusion about this act and other acts, such as meat eating). Some may see a refrigerator as a big, cold concentration camp of (barely) living beings and the kitchen as a vast killing field, and some not.
*its root can ‘sense’ a wall and grow in a different direction, for example, or ‘sense’ the location of the Sun and turn towards it.
Beef, this reminded me of the Jainist anekantavada. And also of EF Schumacher: the materialist epistemology that is so useful in the physical sciences may not (most probably does not) exhaustively define reality.
Mike, we are caged in the reality we are able to sense, directly and indirectly. And we don’t know how to get outside of this perceived world.
On the other hand, a dictionary, for example, a Martian dictionary, where every Martian word is explained and defined by other Martian words, is another self-contained reality. If you don’t know Martian, can you learn Martian with such a Martian dictionary? Can you get inside it (in contract to the above, where you try to get outside)?
I think you’re on to something there, Beef. A promising avenue for more philosophical thought, methinks.
Food for contemplation here:
“Mars Attacks!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ6ZH7Z4TSw
Obviously, Martians are trying to communicate “You are fired”. But fire does not exist Mars, with its nearly depleted atmosphere. Do they have some other concept we are not aware of??? Do they understand the Washington Monument is a phallic symbol? This line of thought boggles the mind. At least in my case.
I suppose this hinges on how much one views knowledge and intelligence as solely neuronal (since plants don’t possess neurons) rather than involving hormones and other signaling pathways.
Some advanced medicine men/women from American Indian tribes talk to plants and apologize and/or ask permission before gathering or eating them. Somewhat similar for some Hindus. There are many different types of Hindu, of course, but I think generally it is felt that karma is relative and the novice would incur greater karma harming himself or herself by going without than he or she would by eating the vegetables. Christians bless the food and I suspect this has similar origins.
Being respectful of and grateful for food -another trait shared by many cultures- may also be for more than acknowledgement of the difficulty in growing/acquiring it; such an attitude may also mitigate harm caused (assuming there is indeed harm). Eat me with a smile; sound crazy, but who knows?
im with you Brooklin : )
Today i picked up ‘The Wise Heart’ A guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology/Jack Kornfield…so far so good : ))
now for a Healthy after blue cod dinner drink
Golden Milk
Step 1 – Turmeric Paste
Ingredients:
• 1/4 cup of turmeric powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground pepper
• 1/2 cup of filtered water
Preparation:
Mix all ingredients in a small cooking pot and stir well. Turn the heat to a medium and mix constantly until the mixture becomes a thick paste. It does not take a long time, so do not leave the stove. Let the mixture cool off, and then keep it in a small jar in the refrigerator.
Step 2 – Golden Milk
Ingredients:
• 1 cup of almond milk (hemp milk or coconut milk are also a good option)
• 1 teaspoon of coconut oil
• 1/4 (or more) teaspoon of turmeric paste
• Raw Honey
Mix all ingredients in a cooking pot, except the honey. Turn the heat to medium. While you are heating the mixture, you must stir constantly and do not let it boil. Add honey according to your taste.
Additional advantages:
• Anti-inflammatory activity, antioxidant, antiseptic, analgesic
• Strengthens the immune system
• Anti-carcinogen
• Helps in the maintaining of the cholesterol levels
• Improves the digestive health
• Detoxification of the liver
• Regulates the metabolism and controls the weight
• High blood pressure
• Memory and brain
• Various skin conditions
• Neurological disorders
• Reduces Triglycerides
By adding black pepper into the dishes seasoned with turmeric, the bioavailability of curcumin is increased for about 1000 times, due to the piperine, the pungent property of the black pepper. Yes, you have read it right, by mixing the turmeric and the black pepper together, the body absorption of turmeric is increased to 2000%!
Peace On Friends !
Hate to rain on parades, but I read that the explosive popularity[marketing] of turmeric/cucurmin the past 2 years has resulted in degrading the potency of turmeric we now buy. I haven’t seen how exactly – maybe harvesting too soon, or suppliers are cutting it with filler?
Cucurmin is the active ingredient, and under the best conditions turmeric contains 3-4%. They say Indians eat huge amounts by our standards – and they were the ones that discovered the pepper trick long ago.
So really, for any efficacy, you need “standardized” cucurmin extract. They put piperine in it – which is like pepper. Then there are other magic formulations that claim to vastly improve absorption. There is even nano- cucurmin for vitamin geeks.
But you still need something to wash the pill down with.
your correct & thanks…gotta love this site!
(the drink is still soothing)…looking into the caps right now’)
My favorite place for vits is Swanson’s on the net. You’ll find a mind boggling assortment of their house brands and other brands heavily discounted as well.
ConsumerLab.com, a vitamin testing place, ranked their house brand cucurmin/piperine as a “best buy”. Lately, they came out with the geekier nano type, but I don’t know what to think of that yet.
WoW they really do have good prices…you the best craazyb.
Thanks for the recipe, Abynormal, we’ll give it a try.
Interesting comments, BB.
I have good friends in the Basque country, and I remember seeing their very old family house / farm. The ‘farm’ animals lived on the ground floor; the family lived literally in the same house, on the floors above the animals. That impressed me, the way they kept on such close terms with the animals, which were something more than cellophaned sources of protein.
I posted the following comment on the NYT in response to an opinion item. So far, they haven’t published it.
And we are offered a political solution to a medical emergency. The only doctors or epidemiologists on scene so far are those that have been infected. No surgeon general. Tells one much of what the response will be.
Political hacks blaming docs and nurses is an easy story to write. No need to check boring, nerdy facts.
The NYT published my comment and left it up for a few hours. Apparently the Grey Lady was not amused by the last line.
You do agree the accepted protocol of taking your temperature twice a day as a way to screen for Ebola at airports or anywhere else is extremely faulty, don’t you? I don’t have exact dates, but he spent around a week and a half total first staying in a hotel in Belguim, presumably to get a connecting flight to the US, then the rest of the time in NYC, freely going about his life as usual, and, we don’t now yet, perhaps even shook hands with his fiancée. Finally his thermometer read 100.3F, and he called his doctor, as directed. Maybe all that is in strict compliance with The Protocol. That’s what bothers me.
q.v.: UTA grad isolated at New Jersey hospital as part of Ebola quarantine.
Thanks for the FT link on Russell Brand. I hadn’t seen his interview with Jeremy Paxman — sweet Jesus, what a performance!
Yes it’s electrifying and turned me into a Brand fan. The Kellaway interview likewise provides a kleiglight contrast between someone in the overclass who gets it and someone buried too deeply in the TINA system machinery to be capable of doing so. Jesus, check out the comments to the FT piece. All these people, though half-heartedly going thru the motions of trying to rebut Brand, are really just reacting to him viscerally, and part of that I feel is a perhaps unconscious recognition that he is leading, is capable of leading, and they are not. An apparent wolf who may well be a shepherd, among sheep.
RB connects to this conspiracy thread too, having been hauled over the usual coals for expressing doubt about the official 911 story to another chap on Newsnight the other day. He basically said what Banger did above; dunno who did it but don’t believe the government story. Cue two minutes hate.
His fracas with Johnny Rotten last week was enlightening too. Like Paxman, Lydon simply can’t imagine his way out of the electoral straightjacket we’re all in, can’t see that representative democracy is now anti-democratic. And like Paxman, Kellaway and the rest of the status quo, there is an element of ‘how dare you’ the roots of which may be found in the fact that while JR talked (or sang) a good revolution, RB is attempting to do it for real, staking out territory Rotten would never dream of assaying.
The best places to be a rich expat.
I understand you are not covered by Medicare when retired abroad. Only the rich can afford that.
Or you can finagle a permanent residency visa which normally gets you access to the country’s healthcare system. Money helps with that too I would imagine.
Yes, that’s true. Ditto ObamaCare. Both only apply on American soil. Taxes, of course, apply wherever you are.
Maybe it’s a stretch, but here’s an example of the privatization of security in an environment where “markets” gone mad dictate the outsourcing of police resources to whomever can pay the most—
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the murder of New Orleans citizen Kim Groves in a hit organized by NOPD veteran Len Davis, now on federal death row in Indiana. Another former New Orleans cop, Antoinette Frank, is also on death row for 3 murders committed during an armed robbery, including the murder of an off-duty NOPD officer.
Then, I was teaching at a New Orleans public school in the 9th Ward. Kids were coming up to me complaining about a crazy cop routinely beating people. In retrospect, that might have been Len Davis.
Anyway, at the time cops were paid very poorly. Davis, a veteran, was making $18,000 a year. The real money was working private details which quickly morphed into police working for who could pay the most, and in New Orleans, that was usually criminal activity–protecting warehouses full of drugs, pimps, etc. Eventually, Kim Groves filed a complaint against Davis after she witnessed him beating up a kid. Internal affairs released the complaint to Davis who ordered a hit on her. The FBI had Davis’ phone wired at the time, so allegations are that the FBI could’ve stopped the hit, but that would have ended their investigation.
He was eventually convicted in federal court and got the federal death penalty. It used to be said that bad police departments were either corrupt or brutal. In New Orleans it was always both.
http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/applatestnews/10459254-171/a-murder-20-years-ago
Russell Brand does Stephen Harper: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/10/24/russell-brand-canada-stephen-harper_n_6045210.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular&ir=Canada+Politics
Cartoon says it all: http://thechronicleherald.ca/editorial-cartoon/2014-10-23-editorial-cartoon
How your cat is making you crazy
From 2012, but always topical on NC…
Yes, good to read stuff like this now and then whenever you suspect that your mind is getting carried away with “The Beauty of Nature”.
So, bottled water is unsafe. What water is safe? Is tap water safe? Should I filter it?Boil it?
I boil and cool my drinking water, but only because that seems to do a better job of improving the taste than tap filters. Since people around me don’t seem to be getting sick, I assume the plain tap water is biologically safe. Of course, as for chemicals, …
These are the best & easiest that I’ve found for my needs.
http://www.freshwatersystems.com/p-67-doulton-ss-2-gravity-fed-filtration-system-w-candles.aspx?utm_source=Amazon&utm_medium=Feed&utm_campaign=AmazonAds&utm_term=SS-2
They come in different sizes and plastic as well. I like SS. The important part is the ceramic filters. Maybe $100 to replace 2 of them, but they last probably 3 years. You can install 4 filters for faster thru put.
The Brita style in stores are useless for anything but chlorine removal. The reverse osmosis type removes the good minerals, which your body needs and they make the water taste good as well.
Ceramic filters are used to make pond scum drinkable in 3rd world countries. The water tastes Great!
Don’t know if anyone has tested them for fracking water yet. Might be one way to find out what is in fracking fluid, since that’s a trade secret so far.
You can add them back, same as bottled drinking* water producers. A gypsum stone in your cistern and a smidgen of baking soda per gallon oughta do.
* Drinking water = tap, spring water = stolen
Yeah, but I’ve also read that’s not as good. But I take vitamins anyway. Hard to know what is quack stuff or not. In Japan they sell expensive water ionizers to get your water “right”. $2000 and then they tell us Japan has terrible deflation. Jeez.
I figure if I don’t take the minerals out, then I don’t have put them back in. Lazy, I know.
Thanks for the info. I’ll look into those Doultons. I used to have a Pur filter, was never really convinced by the taste, went back to bottled water. But those Doultons seem to be Medecins Sans Frontieres grade.
Carlyle, China & Corruption
Mass layoffs are prohibited in China, unless the firm has lost money for three straight years or been unable to pay employees for eight months. I’ll venture Carlyle’s elimination of ten jobs isn’t considered a mass layoff.
One has to love that Carlyle is helping China with anti-corruption, which it’s tainted ethical history. Carlyle’s gaffes include Synagro (bribes), Semgroup (bad energy bets), LifeCare (blaming doctors and FEMA for 25 patient deaths post Hurricane Katrina), Connecticut and New York pension fund (pay to play settlements in the tens of millions of dollars), Brintons (dumping pension onto public) and ARINC (banned from World Bank for bribery).
I can envision Carlyle and China holding hands in anti-corruption. Can they ignore the facilitating payment staring everyone in the face?
http://peureport.blogspot.com/2014/10/carlyle-china-corruption.html
I recall working on a book once, in which there was a comment that the eyes of frogs look like galaxies. So I wonder what that tiny creature filled with Buddha nature is seeing.
Foreign Affairs. The Unraveling. It is a good summary of the topics but without any depth. Just kinda like a laundry list. I was puzzled by how odd it was that it mentioned Ukraine in a resource context but had no particular judgements on the subject and that it admitted we needed to be in Asia to protect resources (keep the peace over resources) but again without any interesting qualification. No mention of say, the Caspian, or South China Sea oil. It was almost like reading a long, well-informed article that was saying yes we are doing all this stuff, but we’re not really sure we care. I thought it was vacuous compared to other editorials that have clear direction. So if Foreign Affairs talks like that, what does it mean? I take it to mean that all these global police actions we are taking on half-heartedly really aren’t as important as they used to be. Which might also mean that diplomacy is succeeding.
Warrant: CHP officer says stealing nude photos from female arrestees ‘game’ for cops Inside Bay Area
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“The allegations anger and disgust me,” Farrow said. “We expect the highest levels of integrity and moral strength from everyone in the California Highway Patrol, and there is no place in our organization for such behavior.”
Rick Madsen, the Danville attorney for the 23-year-old San Ramon woman who was the first to report Harrington, said the implications of the case are “far-reaching and very damaging.”
“The callousness and depravity with which these officers communicated about my client is dehumanizing, horribly offensive and degrading to all women,” he said. “It’s going to lead to another level of mistrust and skepticism to the motive of law enforcement in general.”
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Going on for years????
Uh, does it really make any sense at all? Would you really let a police officer have private, unimpeded access to a firearm that he had confiscated??? So how is it that cops get to have access to cell phones, and in areas where they can download pictures???? If a cell phone is being “confiscated” as “evidence” it should be handled with all the accountability of evidence.
This is either incompetent management, or a management that considered it a “perk” of the job.
And it begs the question: If things are being removed from cell phones, how do we know things are not being added??????????
Minimum Wage: Scott Walker Based ‘Living Wage’ Ruling On Restaurant Industry Study International Business Times
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“Nationally, nearly half of all restaurant workers live at or near the poverty level. Some low-wage employers have acknowledged that people who work for them can scarcely make ends meet. Last year, McDonald’s corporate documents effectively admitted that its low-wage jobs do not provide adequate income. The company advised its workers to take second jobs. The internal “McResource Line” suggested selling unwanted Christmas gifts on eBay or Craigslist to bring in some cash, and told workers to break their food into smaller pieces in order to stretch out meals yet still feel full. ”
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Oh good grief. Your not going to make any money selling your crappy Christmas gifts from your poor relatives and friends, who probably have lousy taste anyway, and undoubtedly do not have a good handle on what a high net worth individual would buy anyway.
We all are sitting on a gold mine of non-exploited resources. ORGANS. Two lungs, two eyes, two kidneys, two hearts. You don’t need all that excess capacity. Sell it on the free market!!!! Very, very few of you will run in a marathon – you scarcely need one lung – two is an absolute waste! Testicles! you can’t afford kids anyway!
Geez…think!
o Silicon Valley company EFI accused of paying employees less than $2 an hour, and in Indian rupees | abc13.com
These poor schlubs were not only getting paid $1-and-change per hour, they were working over 100 hours per week — let me guess, “it’s almost $2/hour when you factor in the overtime.” (And that generously assumes they got paid for the OT, which is pretty much unheard-of in Silicon Valley tech jobs.) Best LOL line: “we unintentionally overlooked laws.” How about we unintentionally prosecute your sorry asses for this bit of slave-labor scammery?
o Exclusive: California getting more Bakken crude by barge than rail | Reuters
o The Housing Recovery Has Been Canceled Due To Data Revisions | Zero Hedge
This is why I only care about unadjusted YoY numbers for such metrics anymore. Harder to fudge.
o U.S. weighs passport, border changes in wake of Ottawa attack | Reuters
“U.S. officials are debating whether to tighten controls on the border with Canada and make it easier to revoke the passports of suspected militants” — presumably “suspected militants” is a subset of the 1/3 of Americans on the FBI’s keep-an-eye-on-this-one list. How large a subset? One wonders. But I suspect growth opportunities aplenty here!
o Northrop must face whistleblower anti-missile lawsuit: U.S. judge | Reuters
Northrop/Grumman is probably in contact with the DOJ to see if they can kickstart a prosecution of the whistleblower under the Espionage Act…
“we unintentionally overlooked laws.”
We were unaware SV median real estate prices are $700K and rents starting at $2000 and up.
We just assumed Indians always smell funny.
Yeah…Keep those gun crazed Canooks outta my country!
Crude oil by barge? What could go wrong?
The British-American coup that ended Australian independence: The Guardian
Dear Lambert, can you help with the disappeared comment thing again? Am I doing something wrong, or is it just normal moderation? Cheers
Reality is going all wonky again – “Hillary Clinton: Businesses and corporations don’t create jobs”
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/10/25/Hillary-Clinton-Businesses-and-corporations-dont-create-jobs/5441414281708/#ixzz3HDaDAaDn
skippy… on a sad note… my own daughter, who is on a two time national championship team, which was going to TX for a big international comp, has refused to go. She is scared to go there and has left the sport as she see no reason to continue if she can’t compete at international levels.
PS. are the sign posts moving faster or the train… ummm… crazzyman?