Two Deer Chill Out in Man’s House for a Year, Bail When Police Show Up Gawker
Meet Microdave, the miniature stallion who at just 18 inches tall is one of the world’s smallest horses Daily Mail (Li)
El Niño Is Coming Back: Here’s What You Need to Know Bloomberg
Women’s World Cup Final Was Most-Watched Soccer Game in United States History New York Times (EM)
The Mob’s IT Department Bloomberg (Chuck L)
Cyber attack on U.S. power grid could cost economy $1 trillion: report Reuters (reslic)
Apple Watch is a FLOP: Sales of the gadget have fallen by 90% since April, report claims Daily Mail (Li)
Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria Frontline (EM)
Panel Calls W.H.O. Unfit to Handle a Crisis Like Ebola – The New York Times (furzy mouse)
Reasons Why Physicians and Advanced Practice Clinicians Work While Sick: A Mixed-Methods Analysis JAMA. Chuck L also provides a link to what he describes as a “dumbed-down” version of the study at Reuters
China Stock Market Meltdown
China Stock Sellers Frozen Out of 71% of Market Bloomberg
Fresh turmoil hits China’s stock market Financial Times
Chinese share market: Stocks plunge, half of listed stocks suspended from trading Sydney Morning Herald. EM: “Is it still a market if selling is banned? Suggestion: keep a ban on selling, but allow buying. /sarc”
80% Chance China Will Rally… Before Final Crash, Says Pettis Value Walk
Aust shares shaken on China fears Business Spectator
My Father Died For Reporting Corruption At AmBank Sarawak Report
Grexit?
Europe is blowing itself apart over Greece – and nobody seems able to stop it Ambrose Evans-Prttchard, Telegraph
Greece Given Until Sunday to Settle Debt Crisis or Face Disaster New York Times
No deal, no liquidity, ECB’s Noyer tells Greece Reuters
Eurozone Sets Sunday Deadline for Greece Financing Deal Wall Street Journal
Behind the scenes at the IMF on a fateful day in the Greek crisis CIGI
Greece debacle marks the failure of German leadership in Europe The Interpreter
Merkel Missteps Over Greece Handelsblatt Global Edition (Swedish Lex)
Germany Caused the Crisis, Germany Must Solve It Real News Network. Bear in mind that that all of the things that Flassbeck correctly depicts as problems are seen as virtues in Germany.
Of rules and order Economist. From May, but key to understanding the warped German view of what sound economic policy amounts to.
The Greeks Have Said No to Failed Policies, Not to Europe or the Euro Matias Vernengo, Triple Crisis
Syraqistan
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
An Unassuming Web Proposal Would Make Harassment Easier Wired. Lambert: “And the same good folks behind TPP.”
Report on Encrypted Communication New York Times (furzy mouse)
T-Mobile’s Transparency: “Other,” and Granularity to Come on National Security Reports Marcy Wheeler
Warren and McCain introduce bill to revive the Glass-Steagall Act The Hill
Clinton says email controversy ‘blown up’ Financial Times
Bernie Sanders Surge Spreads to Iowa – and Maine! ReaderSupportedNews (RR)
The Bizarre Attempt to Present Bernie Sanders As the Democrats’ Donald Trump Angry Bear (furzy mouse)
Obama Administration Aims To Expand Access To Solar Power NPR (David L)
Donald Trump says some of his comments about Mexico distorted Reuters (EM)
After coal, can better health save West Virginia? Reuters
Barclays Chief Executive to Leave Wall Street Journal. Heads actually are rolling overseas due to trading scandals (and did earlier: Barclays had previous purged its Chairman, CEO and President). The codee is “new leadership is required to accelerate the pace of execution going forward.” as in to make sure overly obvious market fixing is a thing of the past. This makes a mockery of Eric Holder’s paycheck-serving view that he shouldn’t have “singled out” as in punished, individuals.
HSBC bankers think they’re ‘above the law’ Cenk Uygur (Julie A)
Clinton wants access for Puerto Rico to U.S. bankruptcy laws Reuters (EM)
Class Warfare
Corporate Capitalism Is the Foundation of Police Brutality and the Prison State Chris Hedges, Truthdig
Scott Walker’s Sleazy New Low: The Callous Plot to Gut Wisconsin’s Living Wage Law Alternet
Antidote du jour (@yinglove_tigger):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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Comments are closed.
“Counting on individuals alone to solve the ‘environmental problem’ is itself a symptom of the overarching problem: the current ideological triumph of a relentless capitalist neoliberalism, grounded above all in the supposed wants and needs of the (consumerist) individual.
In eight closely argued chapters, Parr presents the interrelated crises currently facing us: climate change; flawed carbon-offset schemes; population growth and income inequality; looming water scarcity; looming food scarcity and expanding worldwide hunger; the food-industrial complex, with genetically modified food and factory-raised animals; the green city movement and attendant social inequality; and the oil industry and its lamentable, indeed apocalyptic, environmental record.
Typically, authors focus on individual responses to these problems: for example, changes proposed include eating less meat; driving less or not at all; living in a compact city; recycling, dumpster diving, and so on. Only if a significant portion of the world population decides on these changes, individually or in small groups, will the world somehow be ‘saved’.
Heinberg, for example, in The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003), recommends a radically restrained (constrained?) lifestyle as a way of enabling humanity to survive longer with a much smaller carbon footprint – necessary if we are to continue to ‘flourish’ as the amount of available oil diminishes on a regular and predictable basis. He doesn’t tell us how to get there from here, though, other than through, presumably, the reading of his book and the activation of our individual consciences.
McKibben, in Deep Economy: Economics As If the World Mattered (2007), proposes a small-community ethic as a way of living a healthier life: growing one’s own food, driving less, and so on. McKibben sees the ideal social unit as that of a small community, but his solution ultimately entails people voluntarily, and presumably individually, choosing to live in progressive small towns or the countryside: rural Vermont is his home, and apparently his ideal. It’s unclear how one can live in Vermont, however, if one is living in poverty in a major urban centre, or in rural India.
I mention these two authors not to condemn them, but to indicate the difficulty that lies before any progressive social/ecological critic who does not firmly tie his or her analysis to a critique of global capitalism. As Parr makes clear, one can indeed make individual choices, but how individual is individual? How individual can any choice be in the current economic regime? The individual will always be the creature of larger market forces and logic. The individual’s response, then, will always have to be framed in a larger, inclusive, political context, as political action.
Here I would point to chapter 6 of Parr’s book, ‘Animal Pharm’, which focuses on agribusiness as it is currently constituted. McKibben’s solution to the woes of junk food, unhealthy meat, fast food, genetically modified food – all harmful both to the human body and to the environment in general – entails the voluntary withdrawal from the current regime, and participation in community-supported agriculture schemes (CSAs), backyard gardening, the support of small local organic farmers, and so on. All laudable, to be sure: anyone who has read Michael Pollan knows that eating good food can certainly improve one’s life.
Parr, on the other hand, stresses some obvious problems with small community reform that somehow never seems to get beyond ‘identity politics’ – that is, beyond the improvement of the lives of certain types of people (vegans, foodies, small-town inhabitants, farmers, ‘creative class’ types, etc.) rather than all people. She notes, for example, that ‘ethical food choices cannot be separated from the material conditions determining food production and modes of subjectification (race, class, gender, species).’ Most vegans have soybeans as a central part of their diets, and yet ‘soybean production is responsible for the razing of large parts of the Amazon rain forest that is facilitating the institutionalization of North–South power relations.’ Hence, ‘the vegan approach runs the risk of facilitating the culture of consumption that capitalism advances.’ She then goes on to cite the intolerance of certain vegan groups when it comes to people who have tried veganism and rejected it, for health reasons.”
“Identity politics is not even politics; it’s consumerism as social action. The new signs are contestatory only as signs; thus they are the problem (elements of the ‘spectacle’), not the solution. This is the genius of ever-renascent capitalism: it mutates endlessly, always capable of reappropriating contestation, no matter how seemingly radical, and turning it to its own (exploitative) ends. The vegan feels superior eating soybeans; meanwhile, the Amazon rainforest is stripped for profit.
This example is extended in the following chapter, ‘Modern Feeling and the Green City’. The current ‘greening’ of the city, from Parr’s perspective, is capitalist business as usual, with a green tint. Her example is Chicago, where a massive energy efficiency initiative has been undertaken, thanks to the efforts of Mayor Daley. But, obviously, Chicago’s transformation has less to do with ‘saving the planet’, in the noble abstract, than it has to do with turning the city into an economically efficient and lifestyle-friendly metropolis that will attract the ‘creative class’ types that nowadays are held to be the salvation of agglomerations in the age of knowledge-based industries. As Parr writes,”
“The green roof on Chicago’s City Hall is just another code, alongside other codes such as the LEED-rated buildings, housing voucher schemes, bicycle paths, and so on and so forth. What grounds all of these codes and the shifts they undergo over time is the axiomatic of capital, for in all cases capital serves as the justification for urban development and change.
As with the vegans, the walkable-city types are less concerned with social justice than with establishing their own turf in the most pleasant parts of the gentrified city. And, though Barr does not stress it, gentrification itself is really the index of the failure of the ‘greening’ ideal of the city, because it merely replicates social inequality under the guise of urban efficiency.
When neighbourhoods are ‘revitalized’, when the LEED-style amenities are introduced, those who are not ‘creative class’ hipster geniuses are forced out, and the neighbourhood, which indeed becomes more pleasant to live in, also becomes unaffordable for most people. Gentrification and green urban renewal seem to be locked in a tight embrace; how would one go about separating them?
If I have a criticism of Parr’s book, it is in the lack of specifics she provides in response to this type of question. If we are to do away with consumerist individualism, what, in practice, will replace it? Will people individually choose to undertake a sustainable project that is more socially just and inclusive? How is this sort of individualism different from that put forward by more traditional eco-critics? Will they be spontaneously convinced to do so through their reading of Marx? Or is there a need for some overarching governmental decision-making, somehow under the aegis of Marxism?”
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2013/05/16/the-wrath-of-capital-neoliberalism-and-climate-change-politics/
Skippy…. but yeah… Greece has an accountancy problem… sigh~~~~
Thanks for this unusually clear description of the problem with the usual climate change solutions.
As a Chicagoan, I appreciate the clear statement that bikes, energy efficiency, etc are advertising efforts, only. Chicago is highly segregated, so much so that gentrification isn’t really a problem (except perhaps on the near west side).
If people who see all the layers of this problem wish to have any personal credibility with their friends/neighbors/family . . . and wish to get any sort of a hearing at all, they will have to be ready to counter the sneering question: ” oh yeah? What’s in YOUR footprint?” A visibly lo-carbon life within the confines of permission set forth by our hi-carbon civilization will at least get one the personal face-to-face “street cred” if you will . . . to at least be listened to.
If millions of hi-cred lo-carbon lifestylers are able to say ” look at our efforts. With all we do, it isn’t enough. Systemic re-design and re-configuration of the whole social-cultural body political-economic will have to be adopted to solve the problem” . . . perhaps they will be able to torture all the right pain-nodes to force an unwilling society to change. Perhaps even that won’t do it. But I don’t see it happening withOUT at least THAT to beGIN with.
“Europe is blowing itself apart…” Ah, tradition.
One might ask what the organizing principle of mankind is. Not species self-preservation, apparently. Too bad “we” can’t or won’t manage to articulate one that heads in that direction, with generous helpings of comity admixed.
Random bitstream:
No one had even heard of nations (in the relevant sense), much less thought that they existed, before the nineteenth century. The idea is a creature of German Romanticism.
For several decades now, it has been widely understood too that nations are socially constructed “imaginary communities.”
Like angels, they do not exist in the way that material objects do. Indeed, they do not exist at all, except as fictions, contrived for political purposes. Angels are contrived for theological purposes.
This is not the only difference. Only the planet’s most backward folk still worship angels; nations are worshiped everywhere – not in so many words, but in effect.
They are the gods of the modern age. Nationalism — the new idolatry, as the Biblical Prophets might say – has become a universal religion. http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/19/the-latest-and-maybe-the-last-existential-threat/
Except where individual self-interest clumps to form growing, sometimes incredibly rapidly growing, pockets of diseased tissue in the ol’ body politic. Tribes with flags, and a Caliph to lead them.
Big times. Too bad it seems there are no big people on tap to address them. In any manner I personally might applaud…
And no idea of what outcomes “we” want our political economy to produce, and no tools of intellect or fellow feeling to apply.
Splendid antidote. The way the black background makes the flower pop. The way the shape of the bird echos the shape of the flower.
a hint of the flowers coloring on the birds beak area…Absolutely Magnificent!
“Nature is beautiful because it looks like Art; and Art can only be called beautiful if we are conscious of it as Art while yet it looks like Nature.”
Immanuel Kant
Agreed. The water lily and its promise. The bird and its tough delicacy and obvious intelligence.
Does anyone know the species of the bird?
that’s a double-breasted wind chat.
well, maybe. but this is really cool:
http://www.xeno-canto.org
That’s not a lotus?
I see only the flower…mostly.
The bird is so tiny. And everything is perfectly defined on him from his beak to his fingers.
Looks to me like a tree sparrow (passer montanus), very common here in Thailand, as are lotus flowers (also known as water lilies). Used to have two or three big flocks of them around my house, now only a dozen or so individuals. Cute guys, not particularly shy, nice to have around, but not much song.
From “Greece debacle marks the failure of German leadership in Europe” piece:
Does anybody know of a history of how this myth (more charitably, “meme”) was established, by which a hyperinflation that ended in 1924 somehow explains the success of the Nazi Party in the early 1930s, while the harsh Brünning austerity of 1930-32 is entirely whitewashed? It’s zombie history.
I don’t know the details of the Weimar hyperinflation, exactly how bad it was in 1923. Wikipedia says it ended in 1924. The Beer Hall Putsch was in November 1923, so that may be why the legend took hold. It’s pretty clear the rise of the Nazi party was caused by Bruening’s austerity policies in the 1930s. Interestingly, the policies also caused the rise of the Communist Party. When the combined Nazi/Communist total exceeded 50% Weimar was doomed.
re: apple watch
it gives me great joy to see this shit product fail, in particular after what must have been one of the most expensive marketing campaigns of all time. for months, before and after the release, apple was strapping the thing onto the wrist of every sell-out celebrity who would want one and having them prominently feature for the media to photograph and ibligingly report on (who was wearing which model of the iwatch was a top story on gossip rags like businessinsider for a long time). that this gimmick seems to be heading the way of google glass following such an assault is a sweet victory.
agreed! i recently went on there website to order some parts and its was loaded with watch info, it looks like they are desperate to get the apple heads to buy. Maybe this is the end of everything Apple must be purchased..
let’s hope it won’t work for elections anymore.
Pawning an Apple watch probably wouldn’t raise enough cash to even buy a crappy old .22 pistol.
FAIL
Men don’t buy square watches.
The sad fate of the glassholes should have been a warning to Apple.
I will be especially happy if the repellent Jony Ive gets splattered with any of the residue, since this was his project.
Of course, there shouldn’t be any real business impact, because money is free if you already have lots of it.
But the whole project has a diminishing returns, vacuum the last coin out of the user’s pocket feel to it. I wish they’d fix their two OSs. The one for the iPad keeps churning to no good purpose, and OS X is getting more crapified the more it looks like iOS.
as big of an asshole as steve jobs reputably was, apple was his baby and his primary focus was nurturing it. not so tim cook, who ushered in the looting era.
one of the first things cook did was massively increase his compensation. that this wasn’t taken by the omnisavant markets as a sign that the company’s philosophy was irreversibly changing is yet another in a slew of indictments against them. in the age of cook, there has not been much innovation in the company at all, and each subsequent release of apple’s flagship products has been more crapified than the last. i look forward to watching the company’s slow collapse as it cannibalizes everything that made it succesful.
Guess the i Belt Buckle and Cufflinks are a no go for now. Maybe consumers are wising up to the digital crack to which they have been addicted. Or, maybe I am projecting my personal bias against the endless barrage of “must have” gadgets.
re: Bernie Sanders….Angry Bear
Not unrelated…..Last night on my twitter feed I saw that Dem party apparatchik Joan Walsh was re-tweeting a racially insensitive remark from what “appears” to be a Sanders supporter.
Can be sure to see more under-handed tactics against Bernie from Hillary surrogates.
This is a sign that he is doing far better then they thought and now consider him a threat. It also shows that a large part of the Dems base is more liberal then 8 years ago.
Not necessarily. Obama didn’t vote for the Iraq War. On campaign promises, Hillary was relatively liberal. The issue with Hillary in 2008 was her record which is not hunky dory and Bill’s clown friends in the campaign. She still has the same problem, and she isn’t bright enough to purge her ranks of the usual Team Blue snakes which would go a long way, maybe not now.
Obama wasn’t in the Senate at the time, so he couldn’t have voted one way or the other, and he had no “skin in the game.” True, he gave a speech against it, even if it wasn’t recorded at the time (the one in the campaign ads was redone, in 2008).
Thanks for the Flassbeck interview at RNN. Here’s a very worthwhile, albeit lengthy, quotation, and he’s right about Varoufakis and Tsipras missing this vital point.
How did Germany go for a policy of wage dumping without producing huge damage for her domestic economy, or did she suffer huge damage as well?
Was it because Germany was an export machine?
But we can’t all be export machines. It this, then, an indictment of the current global system?
Addendum: Except the hegemon, whose very existence, under the current scheme, in fact, requires it to be the polar opposite of an export machine. It needs to be an import machine, and lots of creatio ex nihilo* money, to benefit the top layer that is responsible for exerting hegemony beyond the core.
*’Love it. We can own the world by just printing.”
No, it’s an indictment of hard money (gold standards, the Euro for individual countries) without robust stabilization mechanisms like you see in the US. Louisiana is a net exporter of $US, and has been for decades and will be for decades to come – and nobody in Louisiana or Massachusetts – or wherever – gives a flying crap.
If Greece had the Drachma floating on the market, its value would have just gone down until exports were profitable again. Instead, because Germany is an exporter of goods (and thereby an importer of currency) and Greece is exactly the opposite, an importer of goods (and thereby an exporter of currency), Greece is in deep debt. Louisiana doesn’t give a load of cow pies that it ‘bleeds’ currency, the rest of the nation happily helps. Germany, by failing to understand basic accounting principles is entirely at fault for this.
ENTIRELY.
I think in the US, if a Louisianian moves to California, he is a Californian.
In Europe, it would be brain drain.
And when New York hedgies short North Dakota frackers, the jobless there reason it’s class warfare, and not a cause for the state to attack Manhattan.
It’s this way because many people gave up their lives that the union was preserved
ZeroHedge has been down since the market opened, anybody know why ?
It probably couldn’t handle the “but I thought Greece was saved or kicked out yesterday” crowd. If zerohedge made it into a msm article or a msn-type homepage, their servers won’t handle the traffic.
Did John Oliver mention them?
I dont know. I tend to catch him late in the week. Most of his views are online and require audio, but he’s still an ant compared to the appropriate work place news sources at 930. 930 is ample time for rumors to spread.
I was just joking. When he told people to contact the FCC about net neutrality, the response brought down the FCC web site.
True. The video about the ftc was front paged on sites such as Slashdot and reddit the next morning.
Maybe be related to:
NYSE halts trading suddenly due to “technical glitch”.
” The New York Stock Exchange abruptly halted trading of all securities just after 8:30AM PT/11:30AM ET.
Stocks continue to remain at a standstill with a temporary suspension in place, according to a brief note from the financial institution.
The present incident is actually the second malfunction the NYSE has incurred today, although earlier connectivity issues were already resolved.”
http://www.zdnet.com/article/nyse-halts-trading-suddenly-following-glitch-speculation/?tag=nl.e589&s_cid=e589&ttag=e589&ftag=TREc64629f
But it’s not cyber-class-warfare, noone really meant to bring down wall street. Or so they say.
From The Guardian:
President Barack Obama had been briefed on the situation by Department of Homeland Security, which ruled out a cyber terrorism attack, the prospect of which has long worried politicians, regulators and traders. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said there was “no indication that malicious actors were involved”.http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/08/new-york-stock-exchange-reopens-shutdown
The FBI said there were no signs of suspicious activity and no law enforcement action was needed, but the NYSE had as of Wednesday night still not explained the cause of the shutdown. Oh, the delicious irony! Anyone remember Tom Swifties? http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/ccp/web-mirrors/xtalview-mcree/pub/dem-web/misrael/TomSwifties.html
Maybe the current presidential spokeshole needs some humor:
“No indication that malicious actors were involved in the stock market problems,” Josh said, earnestly. And no law enforcement action was needed.
No, only everyone in the oligarchy, from Obama and his masters on down. Small men, in big times.
Maybe the Jubilee will creep in, accidentally and anonymously…
I’m sitting in the airport as my United flight was delayed also due to a computer glitch. Grounded all planes. Also the WSJ.
Live Cyber Attacks http://map.norsecorp.com/
clk on origins & attacks….w i c k e d
zh is showing this mornings ‘traffic’ at the time of ‘failures’…
hacker’s creed: if it ain’t virtual, it ain’t real
Funny how this corresponds with the China stock market crash.
Here’s the correct link for the Glass Steagall article:
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/247093-warren-mccain-introduce-bill-to-bring-back-glass-steagall
Thanks for the link. Given Sen. McCain’s history as one of the Keating Five, I find it interesting that he’s a co-sponsor. Maybe the obvious has finally dawned on whatever part of the GOP that hasn’t lost its mind.
I remember McCain being particularly seeming remarkably blinkered and clueless during the 2008 meltdown that overlapped his Presidential Campaign. I recall McCain yammering on about economic freedom and the ideals of Milton Friedman when asked how he would respond to the crisis and reform Wall Street, oops! I guess he’s either got his head screwed on straight now or he has figured out which way the wind is blowing.
the story still contained this rich howler;
“Many of President Clinton’s former advisers vehemently deny claims that repealing the law brought on the financial crisis, instead pointing to problems in the housing market and risky lending by banks”
Yeah, refusing to let Brooksley Born regulate Credit Default Swaps and Mortgage Backed Securities had absolutely nothing to do with the financial crisis of 2008 either did it Clintonistas?
I think McCain likes to be a wildcard, but he’s still nuts.
Perhaps McCain resents the way that he was humiliated by his support of Keating. He may want revenge against the financial industry.
Lots going on re Grexit , Chinese stock market, etc., but please don’t let attention to the Obamacare-Big Pharma-Big Finance monopoly move with Aetna-Humana merger story.
I give this link just as an example and hope NC readers will get or write a better report:
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/with-merger-deal-aetna-humana-get-ahead-of-the-packupdate-20150706-00499
correct link for Glass Steagall:
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/247093-warren-mccain-introduce-bill-to-bring-back-glass-steagall
Scott Walker’s gambit went a bit deeper than covered via Alternet link. TPM is much better, for those of you who want more details. As a reminder, he spent the recent weeks denying that his office had anything to do with this “hidden agenda” – and that too has been proved to be a lie, if one is to believe this Staff.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/provisions-motion-999-wisconsin-walker
Did the voters-for-Walker know that this is what they would be voting for? If not, do they know it now?
Could a credible New Deal Reactionary run against Walker next time and win? If a credible New Deal Reactionary ran against Walker and lost, that would show that a voting majority of Wisconsites really do like Walkerism.
In which case, those Wisconsinites who don’t like Walkerism might quietly begin tiptoeing out of Wisconsin to other states less likely to adopt Walkerism. They could just leave Wisconsin to the Walkerites, and let Wisconsin become a “Kansas by the lake”.
I guess he has to do something flashy to differentiate himself from the crowed GOP field. The Donald seems to have sucked all the air out of the room.
Well, the NYSE just suspended trading for some unknown reason. This is really catching on!
Theory #1: It’s not Greece. It’s – ta da – oil. Because China just went down kinda big and won’t be buying much oil for a while; Iran is coming on line; our frackers have debt that can’t be repaid and they are crashing too fast to keep it secret. And this just in: the NYSE is where hedge funds close – so the hedge funds/shadow banksters are the ones who funded those fracker junk bonds (?). And also “credit is disappearing” as a result of recent credit defaults no doubt, or expected ones. An ordinary day.
“The Bizarre Attempt to Present Bernie Sanders As the Democrats’ Donald Trump”
Ahh, like Bill Clinton’s attempt to label Barack Obama another Jesse Jackson?
What’s particularly absurd about Germany’s hard stance on Greek debt and failing to simply go to debt forgiveness or even reduction but instead go to Grexit talk is they will lose ALL chance for any repayment with Grexit. They hold strong to refusing to talk about reducing Greece’s debt and retaining some hope of recovering part of what they’re owed but are fine with writing it all off by forcing Greece out and then having to pay more to Greece anyway for humanitarian reasons. Makes absolutely no sense at all. They’d rather kiss off ALL repayment (Grexit) than losen up on their very Nazi-esque desire to murder grandma and grandpa by starvation and homelessness (gutting their pensions) and enslave the remaining working age population with slave wages than be reasonable humans and wrote down the debt. Germans STILL suck as much now as in 1934.
I don’t know why Yanis or somebody doesn’t simply point out the massive haircut and bailout Germany received, in 1953 they got a 50% writedown of German debt and and extension to 30 years for the rest, this allowed the “German Economic Miracle” to take place. Instead we get the “lazy Greeks who don’t pay their bills” narrative..seems the original deadbeats however were the *Deutsch Menschen*.
Perhaps the German leadership is not interested in “money back”. Perhaps the German leaders are now interested in the vindication of honor and the getting of revenge.
NYSE trading has been halted WaPo.
Due to “major technical glitch.” What is it, a full moon? First, United Airlines, now this.
I’ll go with Hacking for $100 Alex
Umm. ..does Roswell ring a bell? Today is the 68th anniversary of Gene Roddenberry stealing the idea for Star Trek from the Ferengi.
My home town made the top link (the deer story)!
And I don’t understand why that’s a crime, by the way.
Besides the ethical dilemma of keeping wild animals (one needs a permit), there are obvious sanitation and safety issues. Children in the area could be harmed by a deer that might learn to approach them.
Not just children. Watched an episode of some nature show on Nat Geo or Animal Planet a few years back where they were trying to successfully sedate a deer so they could free it from some fencing wire that it got caught up in. Was surprised to learn that deer kill people every year. Seems they are capable of producing enormous force when they kick back with their rear legs. They can easily fracture a skull or produce fatal damage to internal organs. Getting kicked by a deer is akin to being hit by a small car.
US’s Boehner: No Plans Now For Puerto Rico Chapter 9 Bill Market News
Re. the Frontline piece on drug-resistant microbes:
Not a regular PBS viewer, just happened to catch an encore presentation of this Oct 2013 piece, which has only increased in relevance in the interim, as the recent links gathered on the page show.
On the ‘no major new antibiotics in development here’ front, we have the usual perverse incentives for Big Pharma – the one Pfizer researcher comes right out and says pills that people have to take every day for the rest of their lives take priority over short-term-usage ones, and the ‘we’re not ruthless … these are basic portfolio management decisions’ guy trots out the ‘we are first and foremost accountable to our shareholders’ myth. Lip service is paid to ‘social responsibility’ but there is clearly no thinking at the executive level along the lines of ‘we make so many $billions off of boner pills each year, so we consider it our civic responsibility to use a small fraction of those profits to subsidize research into medically crucial but not obviously and massively profitable drugs’ – nope, ‘their shareholders would have them thrown into prison for such thinking’ as a realistic threat is the impression the average viewer likely gets.
The more people who die from drug-immune infections, the less people there are to take a pill every day. Perhaps neither Pfizer nor the others will understand that until mass death brings the pill-a-day customer base below break-even levels. Too late then . . .