The Most Famous American Dog on Instagram New Yorker (furzy mouse)
Belgians Fight Terror With Cat Memes During #BrusselsLockdown Time, See thread on Twitter (IsabelPS)
A Harvard scientist who’s studied coffee for 20 years explains why the drink is amazing Business Insider (David L). Science and gee whiz headlines aren’t a great match. Nevertheless…
The United Nations Climate Conference: COP21 Paul Tioxon:
This is a UN conference. This is the official site with a lot of primary source materials, PDFs of agendas, meetings, etc.
Finance is a big part of this. So is eco-agriculture or conserving the soil for farming, among many other Ecology based issues. This is the undigested material that you can poke around in at your leisure, to see what may strike you as significant. This is the biggest geopolitical real politik event of the past few decades. It is sorely under reported and as far as I can tell nearly completely being by passed for importance.
Farmers worry new bill will allow GMO contamination National Media (furzy mouse)
Big Pharma has become addicted to an illusion Financial Times. Important.
China?
Shared from Twitter: China’s New Silk Road Dream Bloomberg
Beware of China’s Safety Record New York Times
Refugee Crisis
Canada reduces refugee intake to 10,000 by the year’s end Euronews
Canada races ahead of the U.S. in bid to resettle Syrian refugees Washington Post/
End of EU Border-Free System Could See Euro Fail, Warns Juncker Wall Street Journal
Europe’s central banks in quandary as Fed tightening nears CNBC
Are we going Greek? Data on the bailed-out economies of the eurozone Fernando Alexandre and Pedro Bação (IsabelPS)
Portuguese Socialist Costa Names Centeno as Finance Minister Bloomberg (Kevin C)
Portugal’s new finance minister is no Varoufakis Politico (Isabel PS)
Grexit?
Germany gives Greece names of 10,000 citizens suspected of dodging taxes Guardian
Greek private sector union calls Dec. 3 strike over pension reform Reuters
Autumn statement: Osborne isn’t fixing the roof, he’s eroding the foundations Mariana Mazzucato, Guardian
Will Low Oil Prices Increase Internal Instability In Conflict Countries? OilPrice
Russia trade war escalates as Ukraine bans aircraft overflights Financial Times
Turkey Downed Russian Plane
Putin Pushes Back: How Russia Is Responding to Turkey’s Downing of Fighter Jet Yahoo (furzy mouse)
Top U.S. Air Defense Commander: Turkey’s Shootdown of Russian Jet “Had to Be PRE-PLANNED” George Washington. Notice how the Fox interviewer is flummoxed.
Syraquistan
Preventable errors led to hospital attack, military says Associated Press
Kunduz Investigation Blames Aircrew, SOF Commander, Computers Defense One. (furzy mouse)
U.S. forces personnel suspended over deadly ‘human error’ Afghan hospital attack Japan Times
You can pay me now or you can pay me later Sic Semper Tyrannis (resilc)
US accuses Syria of buying oil from Isis Financial Times
UN Backs Russia’s War against ISIL Da’esh (Bill M)
Obama Has Threatened Vetoes Over Guantánamo Before, and Caved In Every Time Intercept
Trade Traitors
Japan plans ¥3 trillion-plus extra budget to help farmers cope with TPP, boost social dynamism Japan Times
2016
Dear Media, Stop Freaking Out About Donald Trump’s Polls FiveThirtyEight
Trump, Carson blame media for their bogus 9/11 claim MSNBC
New Kasich ad: If Trump becomes president, ‘you better hope there’s someone left to help you’ Washington Post (furzy mouse)
Terrorism in the Age of Trump New York Magazine (resilc)
Ben Carson Isn’t the Only US Politician With a Hand in Shady Latin American Dealings Nation
Hillary Clinton extends Iowa lead, narrows Sanders’ lead in NH CBS
On ‘the Preponderance of the Evidence,’ Bernie Sanders Is a Democrat Nation
Five charged in $600 million California health care fraud scheme Reuters (EM)
This is How Real Race Wars Begin: White Supremacist Streaming with Guns Ring of Fire
For thin-skinned students, we have nobody to blame but ourselves Washington Post
Introducing the New OPEC Member That Likes Lower Oil Prices Bloomberg
Big banks accused of interest rate-swap fixing in class action suit Reuters (furzy mouse)
Pimco, others sue Citigroup over billions in mortgage debt losses Reuters
Wall St. Faces Mounting Criticism From Regulators New York Times. Important.
U.S. working to keep up with surging weapons demand: Pentagon Reuters (EM)
Class Warfare
Silicon Valley’s Political Endgame, Summarized Medium
How Social Justice Became Cool The Fader< Thomas Chatterton Williams reviews ‘Between the World and Me’ by Ta-Nehisi Coates London Review of Books/blockquote>
Study 329: Big Risk Dr. David Healy (Partick F). http://davidhealy.org/study-329-big-risk
Antidote du jour (abynormal):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
127 comments
Comments are closed.
Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. Proust
Yves, Lambert & NC crew…cherished gardeners of my favorite garden.
Hear, hear!
I spend a lot of time on blogs (news junkie) and notice how raucous (at best) and frequently infantile many of the other comments sections are, descending into name-calling and worse (especially on the political sites). The atmosphere here is so much better… thanks Yves, Lambert, and the rest.
Ditto.
Cheers to all!
http://cjonline.com/news/2015-11-23/bill-clinton-promotes-bipartisanship-praises-bob-dole-ku
My most favorite thing of many about NC is that language, the meaning of words, coherence of argument in a sort of debate style is unparralleled. In the early 80’s it was Noam Chomsky that cued me into how to read the news and I find much of that here. Heroes, yves esp.(it didn’t happen by itself or overnight) and all of her mighty helpers esp lambert for taking such a heavy load. Worth way more than the dollar a day I’ve finally committed myself to
I really love the language here too. Even when it is spinning out in a rant. But mostly for its steady and relentless compilation of the mess we find ourselves in. Thanks for giving us straight tracks NC.
+1
I’m thankful for the quality informative intelligent news source that is NC. Props to Yves, Lambert, the guest writers, & the fellow NC commenters.
In particular, the NC ACA uniquely informative coverage has been vital in being aware of the various designed-in abusive “gotchas” (from narrow networks to the IRS garnishing an old Individual Mandate with interest for up to 10 yrs, etc) that a citizen may face. I would’ve never known about these abuses if not for NC.
Everyone enjoy today. Cheers, Saludos, etc.
Thank you all for caring and sharing. For myself, you make the world a better place.
yes.
`Wall St. Faces Mounting Criticism From Regulators’ seems like a sternly-worded beat-sweetener:
So, William Dudley threatens to consider to begin to possibly crack down on the corrupt culture of the banks at some point in the future. … As he did two years ago. Rinse and repeat.
Otherwise known as YBG, IBBAGS (You’ll be gone, I’ll be back at Goldman Sachs).
Happy T-day to Yves, Lambert and all the contributors and commenters.
I’ve not checked into that article as yet, but assume it’s on par with any of the following (as in been there done that nothing changed).
Sky is blue.
Dog chases car.
Yes, its hard to see anyone on Wall Street changing behavior when every part of our govt (executive, legislative and judicial) are all upholding the fictional debt and underming the rule of law for one purpose: to support the entites who crashed the global economy.
Material value should be able to be monitored to prove that value is neither created nor destroyed. Money shouldn’t make a difference in that balance. So inflation would become non-existent. In this way: The lack of money (means) is what causes us humans to pillage each other and the environment – hence leaving most of us bereft of valuable benefits and trashing the environment so that not even a sewer rat can survive. But if all the money hoarders (banksters and oligarchs) could drop their political terrorism and just provide the money, or if not the money then the material goods directly, to everyone on an equitable scale, there would be no monetary imbalance. Ever. And we could repair ourselves and the planet. Hard to grok.
From Wiki:
Happy Thanksgiving.
When you pardon the turkey, don’t forget to free the berries, fruit, pumpkin and squash as well.
“Vegetables have feelings too!!!”
Super entertaining tv last night “When turkeys attack!”
highly recommended if you can find it!
I missed that interesting show. Had to attend a (green) tea party (chakai) celebrating my receiving a formal tea-name (cha mei) from our tea school (it only took 10 years). Now, I am qualified to teach Sado, though I am no tea master.
Hopefully, those turkeys did not crucify a Christmas tree on a cross of (fiat)papier(money)-mache.
no but they make mincemeat out of several journalists!
Congratulations on your achievement
Thanks.
Now i go back to 1 (from 1 to 10 and back to 1).
You’re number one!!! You’re number one!!!
On Study 329:
The Author writes: “Medicine is no longer what it was. Your doctor needs to relearn the skills of listening to, seeing and touching you. She will have to engage with a biology that recognizes the brain as a social organ rather than with the biobabble that stems from Pharma marketing.”
What? The brain does not use neurotransmitters like the rest of the body? It is ONLY effected by SOCIAL stressors? Then why do people act differently when they get drunk or get stoned? And what do you think changes when we are under social stress? Our neurotransmitters!
The fact is that doctors know that neurotransmitters effect mood, they just do not know how to fix it because the ONLY focus on pharmaceuticals. Mental illness doe not only and inside or an outside cause, there will be a scale with everyone between both. But since this takes time and effort to treat doctors and big pharm want nothing to do with it.
The “biobabble” did not originate from the marketers, they co-opted it from the legitimate research and they distorted it to sell their drugs.
I am seeing this patteren more and more, a swing to “mental illness is only a societal problem”, and it sickens me. If it were ONLY a social problem I would have had a lot more company when I was in the psyche ward.
Turkey’s Shootdown of Russian Jet “Had to Be PRE-PLANNED
Militaries have contingency plans for lots of things.
How is this surprising given that the Turks called in the Russian Ambassador the week before to tell them to stop flying into Turkish airspace and otherwise harassing Turkish aircraft?
The Turks have now released the tapes of them warning the aircraft to turn away before they crossed into Turkish airspace.
Given the amount of time that has passed who knows when the warnings were actually recorded… BUT a shortwave listener released a short recording of a Turkish warning to unknown aircraft he/she happened to hear on 243.0 (Guard) very shortly after the incident. Does that match to what the Turks just released?
Did the pilots not have one of their radios tuned to 243.0? Is a requirement of RuAF operations? Did they ignore the warnings? Where they distracted for some reason and miss warnings? (Maybe they checked their handheld Garmin GPS a little too late? http://i.imgur.com/CKw8Ttn.png?1)
More interesting is why the Russians weren’t more careful after their Ambassador was warned a few days before? Didn’t he pass the word to the Russian military? Did the Russian military ignore the message? Did the Russian military chain of command fail to pass the message down to their forces in Syria to be a little extra careful when maneuvering along the border.
See: Fried Liver Attack.
Just what makes you take the turk’s say so about the location of the aircraft as the truth? Just how many warnings could the turkish pilots issue in the space of the 17 seconds they claim the violation lasted? For that matter, it is impossible to square the distances the turks mention and the length of time they claim, that’s like the Russians were flying at stall speed. Basically, the account the turks gave makes no frigging sense in this time-space continuum, unless they claim the sovereign airspace of Syria as their own. BTW, should I believe that the thousands of times the turks violate Greek airspace every year should result in the Greeks downing a few turks and let allah sort them out? The fact is that this looks and smells like a premeditated murder using NATO’s nuclear umbrella. The events in Syria have developed not necessarily to the sultan erdogan’s liking and this was his move to try to set two nuclear powers on a collision course. With friends like the turks, proven state sponsors of the liver-eaters of ISIS, the US does not need enemies…
The Turkish pilots issued no warnings. The warnings came from Turkish ground control at one of their military centers. The warnings came in the minutes leading up to the alleged border crossing – not after it. This is typically how it works – to this point – in other places as well.
After that it wasn’t a typical event as at least one of the Turkish fighters fired at least one missile at one of the two RuAF aircraft. There was a story today that the Turks didn’t know is was a RuAF Su-24 but were thinking it was a SyAAF Su-24..
As to the Greeks shooting or not shooting down Turkish aircraft… The Greeks are more forgiving? And that is typically how these things unfold.
Who the eff are the turks to control air traffic over the sovereign airspace of Syria?! I heard the recording, the turk is saying “you are approaching turkish airspace” about 26 miles out. That’s TWENTY SIX miles! There is a large difference between ‘approaching’ and ‘violating’. In any case, within the Syrian airspace the Russians are free to do whatever they please. The recording is such a clumsy “proof” that it would be laughable if there wasn’t such potential for terrible consequences for us all.
if there wasn’t such potential for terrible consequences for us all
I find it extraordinary that Obama et. al; are willing to risk a nuclear confrontation over the question of Assad’s rule in Syria. It’s completely crazy and yet the US media is carrying the message that Assad must go 24/7. These are indeed strange and dangerous times.
And for what? There’s no decent outcome for what becomes of Syria after Assad either as far as I can tell.
At 600 mph, twenty-six miles is just a little over two MINUTES. Get within 26 miles of a U.S. aircraft carrier at sea and watch how little warning time you get.
Again, who the eff are the turks to tell any aircraft what to do in an airspace that does not belong to them? Especially after sultan erdogan complained two or three years ago about how “A short-term border violation can never be a pretext for an attack,” he told Parliament at the time.” after Syria downed a turkish jet. And not to mention the thousands of times every year the sultan’s air force violates Greek air space. Yet you are saying that a jet 26 miles outside the sultan’s airspace, and clearly engaged in something other than menacing the sultan’s gaudy palace, merited being warned and then shot down???
And now that it has come out that the Russians had informed the US about the mission of the two Su-24’s and their mission grids, do you think that the turks would not have been informed? Under such circumstances, it becomes only too clear that this was an ambush by the Turks, with the possible backing of the US, in order to provoke Russia into lashing out now that the “freedumb and democracy” coalition’s hard work of sowing chaos is going up in flames (as are the sultan’s son’s profits from doing black market oil deals with IS, BTW).
What I want to come out is, why now? The two, er, three, no, that’s four, uh, I didn’t see them, and there’s another, well, anyway, the whomever haven’t previously traded blows, in the sky before. If my reading serves me, all of the previous shootings down of aircraft in this theatre were ground to air in nature. Ground pounders wanting to knock down jets that have been blowing them, GPs, up with some regularity, I can understand. Air to air though. That usually means someone far from the front lines has put the word out; “Opposition air is now fair game.” The fact that the Su 24s were flying close to the Turkish border without Top Cover, fighter jet protection, means that the old rules of engagement were “forgiving” of minor ‘incursions.’ At the speeds that jets fly, and the convoluted nature of the Turkish Syrian border in that region, ‘incursions’ would almost be a given, for both sides.
Turkey has long wanted parts of Syria for its’ own. Given the before mentioned physical facts of geography and high speed air flight, what the Turks are trying to accomplish looks like a de facto “no fly zone” in northern Syria. The Russians have stated that they do not support such a state of affairs, on the legitimate grounds that a Turkish enforced “no fly zone” is an usurpation of Syrian governmental authority.
Sultan Erdogan is making his bid to become Hegemon of the Middle East.
I dont believe it was a coincidence that this event occurred the same day Hollande set off on his tour to convince the US, Italians, Germans, and Russians to work together to resolve the Syrian situation. Increasing tensions between NATO and Russia seems to have prevented any decisive cooperation in Syria. Prior to their meeting yesterday both Putin and Hollande had expressed interest in closing the Turkish border as a first step, but in their announcement afterwards this objective was dropped and only vague promises of intelligence sharing in the air campaign were offered(at least that’s all the NYT piece reported). Clearly the priority for the US and Turkey is not the defeat of the IS, but securing their longer term strategic interests in Syria. Turkey’s aggressive move seems to have had the desired effect. I wouldnt be so sure it was planned with the US ahead of time, but it was certainly a planned attack. Now we can only hope that Russia and Turkey avoid further escalation.
The big question in my mind is whether the Turks and Washington DC coordinated this shoot down or if the Turks have turned into a loose cannon to the great surprise of Washington.
If coordinated, I would want to know who specificately in Washington gave the green light to knock down Russian planes with F-16s.
Well, its also possible the Turks thought they had the OK from Washington but didn’t.
Saddam thought Washington OKed his war against Kuwait, but he was mistaken and got invaded.
He probably did. Until the Saudis heard.
The problem with Washington is they have made actual leadership a theater prop and now it matters.
Saddam thought he had the Green Light from April Glaspie to send his troops into Kuwait. What was the wording? ” the us takes no position on conflicts between Arab states,” or some such idiocy?
Effing stupid species.
The only persistent principles in the universe are accident and error…
The Russians have now decided to apply economic countermeasures – they’re in an excellent position to slice-and-dice the Turkish tourist and ag industries, being their most important customers. They may also, but without publicity, aid the Kurdish resistance within Turkey. In other words, this is likely to hurt.
That’s a big relief for the rest of us; but such a measured response also suggests that the Russians may have been testing the limits – the point that they’d been warned is relevant. And of course, they were bombing ethnic Turkish rebels (who retaliated by killing the pilot and shooting down the rescue copter), to add to Turkish annoyance.
If you look at the map, the border (which was modified in Turkey’s favor during WWII) creates a tight corner that must be very awkward for jets to maneuver in.
I’m not inclined to think anyone was a good guy in this incident, though the Russians have considerable right on their side (like actually attacking IS).
Whole thing reminds me of Georgia in 2008. Arrogant leader things his ‘allies’ will back him up, pokes the bear, and turns around to find no one is standing behind him.
As a minor addendum, I will permit myself to say that the liver-eaters are not just ISIS. Nusra and all the other alphabet jihadi gangs supported by America, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other members of the Axis of Jihad are also headchopping throat-cutters. The actual literal eater-of-his-dead-enemy’s-liver) was a local commander in the Free Syrian Army, if my memory is correct. And the FSA is the most Obama-beloved Moderately Headchopping Liver-eating group of Democratic Oppositionist Regime-Opponents that Syria has to offer.
Assad is the only legitimate President that Syria has. I fully understand the rightful properness of the R + 6 exterminating all traces of rebellion from every source equally . . . . by whatever means are most effective.
And making the leap of faith that all of the argument is “true,” all that “proves” exactly WHAT? “It’s their own damn fault!”?? Is that the claim? And this is to distract the jingoists a!ong us (we all have a soupcon of that in our mix, non?) from focusing in on broader issues, like how it turns out that the Russians peeled back a lot of the BS our Imperial Warlords have been packing into the Narrative about the provenance and nature of ISIS, and ” moderate terrorists, and how trashing continents by “spreading democracy” via the neocon-neolib technique of weaponizing, corruption and “regime change,” and of their BS-obscured actions with the war toys they make us pay for and the nature of their of their Grand Plans and wholesale and retail operations vis-a-vis what they denominate for public consumption and their private dysperceptions as friend, ally, enemy?
The Great Big Cannon of another ” oops, I guess that got a little out of control” global war has its breach slammed shut on a double charge of propellant behind a triple load of munitions, and Private Alfred E. Newman is playing at braiding the lanyard…
As the Arty boys yell when the get it up to shoot off the Big Guns, “Fire mission! Fire mission!”
I agree.
Some of our “allies” do not have our best interests at heart.
And in playing that geopolitics, we are perilously close to replaying WWI
of course, what the interests of the 99% of Americans are, the the interests of the “leaders” of the country are, are two different things.
===============
Göring: Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hermann_G%C3%B6ring
=======================
actually, I don’t think we bother with declaring war anymore…
Right. It used to be, under the “law of War” (guffaw) that one needed to find or invent an at least sort of quasi-plausible ‘casus belli’ and present that formal declaration at least simultaneous with the Beginning of Hostilities. The neocon-neolibs have dispensed with that quaint archaism. The Boche is arrayed at the Belgian Frontier! Aux Armes! Aux Armes!
What’s funny is that any clear eyed player of the “Great Game” should know beforehand that “allies” always have their own agendas. The smartest boys and girls in the room? Pull the other one…
…I would offer that there is no such thing as a “clear eyed player of the Great Game.” Sneaky, subtle, “sophisticated” especially in the more archaic meanings of the term, lying, grasping, vicious, murderous, but from the standpoint of ordinary people, idiotic, meaningless, dead-end…
Fortuitously for the small subset that fortuitously (açcidents of birth — place and time – and on account of Resources and Sh-t Happening) get to be players in the Game, us mopes are resilient and most of us are compliant or at least oppressable. So when they f–k things up beyond all recognition and repair, as with the world wars and the recent glorious crapificollapsing of the world economy, we mopes regenerate the substrates an Real Wealth and bud off idiotic pseudopodia that “innovate” and “innervate” and “enervate” the next round…
Interesting that the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path lead to the same place as a Western philosophical innovation, “Futilitarianism.”
How’s it going, over at COP21, hmmm? Older men saying in “diplomatic language” to the rest of us, “Apres nous le deluge! IBG-YBG, so as to the miseries you and the aborted offspring our policies and motions are and will be suffering on account of the self-pleasure for our limbic systems only that our exercise of unbridled power are causing, in the immoral words of Cheney and Nuland and the rest, GO F__K YOURSELVES. Not a damn thing you can do about it but perceive, kvetch a bit, submit, and die…”
I agree entirely. It seems as if those who think they are the best and the brightest are the most ignorant and amoral….
You tried but you’re not even close. Turkey is out to maneuver our country into war, and why not considering how successful our central government’s allies are in getting us to do the dirty work
U.S. working to keep up with surging weapons demand: Pentagon
The Pentagon is not a war-fighting machine, the Pentagon is a weapons-buying machine.
Look, the weapons racket is a global Interoperable Enterprise, not some category made up of warring factions. All our Rulers happily buy and sell to and from each other the on-speculation and to-specification products of the Global War Toy Industry, SIC Code 77666. Two entries from Aviation Week today:
Defense
Saudi Arabia is broadening its agreement with Antonov to develop and build a new version of the An-32 medium transport to include special-mission derivatives of the improved An-132D, four for surveillance and two for jamming. To be built by Taqnia Aerospace in Saudi Arabia, the An-132D will be re-engined with Pratt & Whitney Canada PW150A turboprops and is planned to fly in late 2016. Read more (subscribers)
and
Defense
Turkey has canceled a controversial agreement to buy a $3.4 billion long-range air and missile defense system from China, and will instead develop a system locally. The decision followed an evaluation by Ankara’s defense industry executive committee. The 2013 selection of China’s HQ-9 over European and U.S. systems shocked Turkey’s NATO allies. http://m.aviationweek.com/commercial-aviation/week-aerospace-and-defense/Nov-15-20#slide-10-field_images-1380461
Take comfort as you take shelter: There aint nothing you or I can do about any of it. “Resistance is pretty much futile.” Us ordinary people are just here to stoke the furnaces, jusr along for the ride… So make some popcorn, sit back and pick aone of the faux teams to root for…
In homage to the F-35 on this Thanksgiving day…
https://youtu.be/lf3mgmEdfwg?t=233
Thanks for that…
Top U.S. Air Defense Commander: Turkey’s Shootdown of Russian Jet “Had to Be PRE-PLANNED”,
has the messagae: -Video has been removed by user.
Anyone know of another site? Such a shame to miss seeing a Fox shill flummoxed.
messagae-> message (the editor is out)I found it by googling
It is fascinating in its way. The interviewer keeps saying ‘ok’ but to whom? the voice in her ear telling her to shut the general up?
“Interview” gets interesting about two minute mark where General says Obama engaging in “Kabuki”. Fox personality Carlson basically repeats War Party talking points.
http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/11/24/lt-gen-mcinerney-turkey-shooting-down-russian-plane-was-very-bad-mistake
Gotta love how proto Stepford Gret ends the whole thing with linking her first statement “High Stakes” at the end of the interview, thus wrapping up the whole thing with “I’m Right” E.g. suggesting her entire line of statements is truth.
Skippy…. seems she needs to be sent back for repair…..
Ah, and there is a form of planning named Post-Planned?
I though the name for that activity was “cover up”.
This is why I believe USians do not speak English, but a dialect, American, as used by the uneducated.
Certainly American spelling is suspect, Color indeed.
Speaking of the nobility of the English language, there of course are master practitioners, especially among our British cousins. Huge selection, one tiny example: “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”
Well, Britishers don’t speak English either. They speak a dialect called Brittinglish. For that matter, Englanders speak an ancestral dialect called Englandish. Just as we Americans speak Ameringlish. And US/Mexico borderlands inhabitants increasingly speak Spanglish.
There is a prediction that “English” today is like Roman (Latin) in the age of Late Rome. As evermore peoples learned Latin, they evolved it into evermore freestanding languages, the Romance languages. In the same way, English is separating into the Englance languages . . . Englandish, Britinglish, Ameringlish, Austringlish, Newzinglish,Hinglish, Singlish, Spanglish, etc. Wait a thousand years and these will be separate free-standing languages. And the present day snobbery of Englandish speakers towards speakers of the other Englance languages will be long-forgotten.
Adam Branch in Displacing human rights: war and intervention in northern uganda discusses how various humanitarian efforts can actually decrease democracy and empowerment to those they are meant to help. This seems to apply to many areas outside Africa as well.
“human rights are displaced from the political to the administrative, from the people to the elite, from the autonomous to the dependent, from emancipation to control, from struggle to demobilization”
In the spirit of the season: for some reason, in my head “Turkey Downed Russian Plane” keeps transitioning to the line in “As God is my witness I thought turkeys could fly” about the turkeys counter-attacking..
Thanks for the laugh. I’ll bet if a jet sucked a flying turkey into an engine, that engine would not be long for this world. (Poor turkeys. If everyone had to help in dispatching and preparing a live turkey, as I have had to in the past, turkeys would get more respect and an appropriate appreciation for the sacrifice they make so that we may live.)
When I was hungry in Hungary
I ate a turkey from Turkey
Served on china from China.
My tradition is of corn dogs for Thanksgiving.
Although I note there is no corn or dogs in them….
I think the main ingredients are things that may have been near chickens…
I think the mustard I put on them is actually made from mustard seed…at least for now
http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/synthetic-mustard-oil.html
And then I ran.
Was it greasy in Greece? HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!
Rolls-Royce tests bird-strike survive-ability by firing (non frozen) chickens carcasses into the engine. The information I have is silent on the behavior of hungry engineers with a loaf of bread catching the cooked carcasses at the engine exhaust, wanting a free lunch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN_Zl64OQEw
Actually not an F-16 but a Canadian training flight. The pilots ejected successfully but one was badly injured.
For those who came in late:
I loved WKRP.
Re: Thin skinned students/WaPo
One aspect missing from all discussion is the importance of social media to young people. The article’s picture shows lots of kids sitting alone together. That is, they’re almost all looking at some digital device, not talking to each other. It’s very easy to shut out the “real” world and absorb oneself in self-selected online communities. 1 and 2 line sentences on facebook or twitter aren’t the same as careful argument or analysis, but are a great way to find out what “everyone else in my group is thinking and doing”. Social media can have a bandwagon effect. With very little thought involved. It can also isolate (shelter?) students from learning how to effectively engage with different points of view.
A few generations of 100% social media, the human brain will evolve into something very different.
Right, Electronic toys will remove the sex drive of teenagers.
No, just a lot of sticky electronic toys.
Quite frankly I think this generation is way more tolerant and sensitive to the feelings of others than my own. I don’t get the sense they are crybabies as much as I get the sense that my generation doesn’t want to be culturally sensitive or held accountable when they say or do things that might be refutable or controversial.
It sounds like a bunch of adults are the whiny babies. They miss the whole entire history angle themselves when they fail to recognize that yes, you have a right to put different ideas out in the marketplace but those that disagree with them also have a right to CHALLENGE those ideas and explore whether or not they benefit the majority and make changes when they believe the status quo policies don’t work.
As for the idea that “everyone gets a trophy” personally I prefer it to the idea that only one or two people get one based on luck of the draw. Part of the problem my generation seems to have is this idea that only some people are deserving of kindness and that “losers” deserve what they get when they are exploited. Personally, I prefer this generation’s viewpoint that every single person is deserving of some kind of award for being a contributory part of the human race.
I don’t disagree with you. My point is that constant media stimulation of still developing brains may be having a pronounced effect on temperament, which may lead to either over-response or retreat from daily real world stimuli. It’s just a hunch.
See this older AlterNet article:
http://www.alternet.org/story/156008/manic_nation:_why_americans_are_anxious,_stressed,_depressed_and_fat_%28and_what_we_can_do_about_it%29
I don’t know that it has as much to do with the media stimulation on the developing brain as it does that the media makes us hyperaware of what’s going on in the world everywhere(which can be overwhelming and make someone shift between apathy and frenzy.) We moved in June and didn’t have TV or internet(and I have chosen to forgo a smart phone.) My husband and kids both remarked that I was a much more relaxed individual without all the added information of what was going on outside of my own little world. When I consider information and see things like my own government’s apathy to it’s most vulnerable or am upset by the plight of Syrians I tend to be depressed and anxious as well. I would think most people would be concerned with the direction we’re going in. Actually, I’m pretty sure that the data suggests most of us think our own country is going in the wrong direction. That should be concerning.
Don’t get me wrong I do think social media influences how they relate to the world, I just don’t think that it is impacting their brain development. I think it’s more along the line of social conditioning.
The only problem with “millenials” is they think beltway types are awful human beings. Every complaint about the youth is to justify support for crummy people such as Obama or random Republican. It’s important to marginalize the youth before the get ideas.
The world needs some new ways of thinking, since it’s pretty clear that the conventional wisdom is largely to the benefit of a few of us and at the expense of the majority.
I wonder if the person who wrote the editorial is one of those “I was born on third base so I deserve more than others” sort. How dare those young uppity people recognize and point out that there are disparities in the way people are treated and that some people seem to be treated as if there opinions are more important than those of others.
The only problem with “millenials” is that as a category, it’s sloppy and dumb. IIRC, only 34% of the people in that age cohort actually identified as “millenials.” Which hasn’t prevented the press from trying to shove them into that box anyhow.
How much looking at real objects in the 3-D world do infants and toddlers and kids need per day to preserve, pruning-avoid, and enhance the brain-based interneuronal networks involved in depth-perception, intro-ocular based lens thickening-thinning for near-far ocular focusing, etc? If they don’t get that quota of 3-D real-world object-observation per day, do they grow up with irreversible brain-based vision-center damage? Ocular-system nerve-muscle coordination damage?
And if so, how much zero lens-adjustment viewing of a non-dimensional depth-free screen is needed per day to prevent and crowd out the minimum real-world observation time needed to develop functional analog-relevant eye-brain systems?
Perhaps that is part of the problem which flora and others are trying to raise in this context.
And would reading too many paper books also interfere with this?
I saw this a few days ago: Expert blames high-tech homes for restless rugrats (Yle.fi) Quite impressed with the admonition to have some shame when using mobile devices in front of your children.
Generational generalizations – always a bit tricky, eh? My anecdotal impression, gained from working as high school teacher in a title 1 suburban school: I see little evidence of a kinder, gentler world being brought about by young people.
A bunch of old farts were talking around the Thanksgiving table about Black Friday – about how grateful that this nonsense wasn’t around when we were growing up. In my opinion, the younger generation view themselves as consumers rather than citizens. And perhaps it is from this identity -“The customer is always right,” that we get the “everyone deserves a prize” mentality – and not from supposedly increased levels of sensitivity and tolerance.
I guess I prefer nobody gets a trophy (but everyone gets the necessities of life and a chance to be full human beings).
Yah, give ’em all a Libertarian Gift Bag, with paperbacks of the works of Rand, Hayek, Mises, the Heritage Foundation, Koch University press…
Here’s an amusing and disturbing article about some absurdly thin skinned students:
http://www.ottawasun.com/2015/11/20/free-ottawa-yoga-class-scrapped-over-cultural-issues
This is not satire. This really happened.
While I disagree with the students and think that one of the best things about our culture is that we’ve appropriated parts of other cultures, I do respect that the students should have a say in what occurs on their campus.
It also sounds like the instructor was put out that someone questioned on how she was running the class. Her commentary, “People are just looking for a reason to be offended by anything they can find,” said Scharf, sounds dismissive.
I also find this to be reasonable rather than thin skinned. Ahimakin said the student federation put the yoga session on hiatus while they consult with students “to make it better, more accessible and more inclusive to certain groups of people that feel left out in yoga-like spaces. … We are trying to have those sessions done in a way in which students are aware of where the spiritual and cultural aspects come from, so that these sessions are done in a respectful manner.”
I particularly like that the intent is to make the program more accessible and more inclusive. In this case it sounds like it is Scharf, not students, who don’t want debate. It sounds like she doesn’t want to discuss aspects of the culture yoga comes from(while some others find it important.) That is certainly her right. However, if that is the case then perhaps she would be better served by teaching the classes off campus.
It sounds like the adults are confused on what an open debate on the market of ideas is.
market of ideas?
Where does your “logic” fit into that? An upgrade?
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/11/links-112515.html#comment-2518418
You are a slippery little liar.
Until you admit you lied, or, to put it more adultely, mis-resprested the truth, you are banned from the “market”.
“While I disagree with the students and think that one of the best things about our culture is that we’ve appropriated parts of other cultures, I do respect that the students should have a say in what occurs on their campus.”
So its ok for the majority of students to tell the minority of students that want to do something like Yoga that they cant do it?
To extend my post, what if the majority of students want to shut down, I dont know, the Gay Straight Alliance club or something?
[link]
I’m a student at this university. The whole thing was made up. Basically, there was an organization for students with disabilities that was offering free yoga classes, but the peak attendance for those classes this semester was three students, so they decided to cancel it for the rest of the semester and figure out a way to make it better meet the needs of students for next semester. The teacher of the class was understandably unhappy about the classes being cancelled and seems to have made up the “social justice warrior” angle. There are many other free yoga classes still being offered on campus.
Thanks for the addition information. It appears that the situation is not as bad as the Sun article implied. Unfortunately, there’s also some nonsense in the article to which you linked:
Some of the most blatant commercializers of yoga and South Asian traditions have been Indians: Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (aka Osho) and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (the Hare Krishnas) are two notorious examples.
If some students don’t like the way that the course is taught, they don’t have to take the course. The course is free, by the way, so I doubt that anyone’s official transcript is in danger of being fouled up by an unsuitable course.
The spiritual and cultural aspects of yoga are more properly taught in the Religion, Philosophy, Anthropology, or History departments.
Thanks for that link. We’ve had the equivalent at my uni lately. Turns out that in my uni’s recent case the sensitive ” “social justice warrior” with “fainting heart ideologies” in search of a cause celebre.” is, in fact, a right wing ideologue intent on destroying the credibility of inclusive policies by making them look ridiculous. A quick check of my “social warrior’s” LinkedIn profile and facebook page showed her rightwing affiliations. She cares no more for inclusiveness than a turkey cares for Thanksgiving. She’s trying to make social justice look ridiculous.
Sorry well meaning students are being used to undermine their own best intentions.
We’re bombing the wrong people… Come on Russia, let those nukes fly and put us out of our misery.
http://exiledonline.com/feature-story-the-case-for-nuclear-winter/
“They would sing hymns to the warheads, seeing in them the first weapon we have ever obtained against the universe which has brought us into being to suffer and die.”
Brilliant! Thanks for that. Just what the Doktor ordered: an anti-thanksgiving rant.
Practitioners of various Asian religions have been willingly coming to Europe/America to teach us since the 19th century. It wasn’t “appropriation” that some people here listened and tried to make use of what they were taught.
Top U.S. Air Defense Commander: Turkey’s Shootdown of Russian Jet “Had to Be PRE-PLANNED” George Washington. Notice how the Fox interviewer is flummoxed.
That Youtube of Fox News got taken down quick. Guess Fox doesn’t want it out there.
Does this sound like a normal society:
Enjoy the bitter tang of American exceptionalism. And remember to thank the Peace Laureate / Commander in Chief who produced this show of force.
Thanks Bossman for this “Show of Farce.”
re:Kunduz Investigation Blames Aircrew, SOF Commander, Computers
We didn’t do it. Or oops. See our somber faces. Here’s a $1, 000 coupon redeemable at your nearby VW dealer.
“This is a UN conference. This is the official site with a lot of primary source materials, PDFs of agendas, meetings, etc.”
Sounds important. The link?
The link is there:
http://unfccc.int/meetings/paris_nov_2015/meeting/8926.php
Thanks; I overlooked it.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Pope Francis warns it would be “catastrophic” if special interests get in the way of a global agreement to curb the fossil fuel emissions blamed for global warming at a meeting next week in Paris over climate change.
In a speech to the African U.N. headquarters on Thursday, Francis said the Paris negotiations mark a crucial step in developing a new energy system that “corrects the dysfunctions and distortions” of the current model of development and fights poverty.
Francis has made ecological concerns a hallmark of his nearly 3-year-old papacy. But on Thursday, he took particular aim at those who deny the science behind climate change.
In the United States, that accounts for several Republican presidential candidates and lawmakers, who have opposed steps U.S. President Barack Obama has taken on his own to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
He said: “It would be sad, and dare I say even catastrophic, were special interests to prevail over the common good and lead to manipulating information in order to protect their own plans and interests.”
re: Study 329 Big Risk
http://www.rheumatologynetwork.com/articles/preventive-medicine-and-road-hell1
As I used to tell my patients before I retired (and still when approached for a “cubsider”), “Yes, It’s good for you — this week.”
From “Wall St. Faces Mounting Criticism From Regulators New York Times.”: ” principal regulators appear quite determined to do it for them, promising to break up the big investment banks if they need to.”
I don’t see how anyone can write this without noticing what’s wrong with it. The sentence says that the problem is the size of the banks; yet it calls for self-policing by those same banks. Is that really what the regulators are thinking? And what on earth is the reporter thinking? Yes, the topic is important, but this also illustrates just how captured the NYT is when it comes to Wall St.
Further: the article quotes Kant: ” “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end but always at the same time as an end.” It’s inspiring advice.”
It may be “inspiring,” but it’s completely empty. It literally means nothing at all. Kant is an old bugaboo for me, clear back to undergraduate philosophy. The particular then was very similar: his definition of “moral sense”, which takes up an entire page of verbiage, when analyzed carefully is completely circular (as my teacher acknowledged). I concluded that’s a fundamental issue with Kant, also exemplified by the above quote. He’s the reason for the rise of the sceptics like Hume and Nietzsche – both vastly better writers, though Nietzsche isn’t actually any clearer.
That’s an off-topic rant, but connected with the Times reporter’s failure to grasp.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/26/eu-alpha-bank-eurobank-stateaid-idUSL8N13L3I620151126
Apparently Greece’s Eurobank and Alpha raised capital from private investors. Makes one wonder what the terms were for the respectively €2.7 bln and €2.1 bln. Plus, who invested the money? At least the EC seems to be satisfied enough to carry on with restructuring.
> New Kasich ad: If Trump becomes president, ‘you better hope there’s someone left to help you’ Washington Post (furzy mouse)
Aww c’mon Kasich, go for the jugular. Heck, he can re-use those old LBJ anti-Goldwater ads with just a voiceover.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDTBnsqxZ3k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWusOhZpq7w
Niemöller’s words are always a call to decency. And Trump whatever, is right sometimes, if more often than a stopped clock certainly no more often than a quarter comes up “heads”, but is no friend to decent aspirations really. So world’s smallest violin to see Trump go … please go now. And while Goldwater ended up being a pretty decent guy, I’m pretty doubtful Mr Narcissist is anything but a narcissist.
The thing is while Trump said some of those things, I’m less certain he really said all of them (a complete defense of beating up BLM protestors for instance). And while Trump may want to suppress journalists the Obama administration has gone far further in actually doing so (the James Risen case for one) and the W administration went around actually murdering them (the “Collateral Murder” video leaked by Manning/Wikileaks).
Another presidential season of amnesia where we must all pretend we don’t already live in a police state.
Last paragraph of Silicon Valley’s Political Endgame:
Economically, the technology industry exacerbates inequality between the rich and middle-class, but eradicates poverty by making essential goods freely accessible. Ultimately, this will trend toward a two-class society of extremely wealthy workaholics who create technologies that allow the rest of society to enjoy leisurely prosperity. The cost for this prosperity will be inequality of influence
This is first season Star Trek sci-fi from the hippie days. The fact that something so naive can drive informational capital is as steeped in bad irony as the Rand/Greenspan money coup we slept through.
Only people in charge can “allow the rest of society to enjoy leisurely prosperity.” Technology allows those with access and privilege to surgically deprive, grant or lend at interest as much or little “leisurely prosperity” as is convenient to their personal project. Memo to the moneyed: Debt is still debt, hunger is still hunger, and disease is still disease. Easing life for the masses is a noble goal, but it’s a political agenda that self-organizing “meritocracy” and industrial “progress” will never advance by accident.
Nonsense. A simple hammer, or even the button holding up your pants, is also “technology” ; how does your argument apply to those? Let’s see:
” [The button that holds up your pants] allows those with access and privilege to surgically deprive, grant or lend at interest as much or little “leisurely prosperity” as is convenient to their personal project.”
And another thing: “debt” is ontologically distinct – that is to say, essentially different than – both “hunger” or “disease”. Your use of the word “still” as their common modifier adds nothing – but pretense!
Hunger has to be sated or you die. Debt can be avoided, written off, or forgiven. Its a bad analogy.
ZH’s irony detector appears to be offline this day (text markups theirs):
The True Meaning Of Thanksgiving
And ZH like this meme so much, they posted a second piece on it a few hours later (again, highlights theirs):
The Real Non-PC Reason We Celebrate Thanksgiving
Aside from the tiny niggle that the last quote is due to Santayana rather than Goethe – but hey, never let ugly facts get in the way of a good meme – and that the Pilgrims, were they around today, might be rather surprised to be labeled as proto-commies when their very survival in the New World depended on a high degree of societal collectivism, and that their ‘success’ was based on what was effectively a huge land grab, this is fabulous stuff!
See, it’s all about exceptional ‘Mericans and their capitalistic-enterprise-supporting prawperty rights. Even better if it’s someone else’s prawperty one is claiming rights to. Take that, y’all panty-waist Marxists!
Sorry, that should read “…proto-commies who soon embraced the ‘sound realism of capitalism’.” And after John Smith departed and left her in the lurch, Pocahontas took up the sound realism of hedge-fund management.
US knew flight path of plane downed by Turkey: Putin.
So is the tail wagging the dog or the other way round?
The U.S. seems to have moved pretty quickly to distance itself from Turkey on this e.g. the “U.S. official’s” statement to Reuters that the Russian plane was in Syrian airspace when it was shot down. Although from what I hear on NC maybe the U.S. doesn’t have a consistent policy either…
I literally laughed out loud this morning when I saw the headline “Erdogan says Syria’s Assad, not Turkey, backing ISIL”.
Erdogan is completely delusional.
No more senile or delusional than any other business administration student working their way into an executive position. I wonder if people have wised up to this “reality-creating” blather too much in the workplace to take it at face value when not being paid.
Assad is apparently backing the terrorists that are trying to destroy his government! The entire civil war was a FALSE FLAG guys!!!1!
I dont even words
When you’re going to lie, lie BIG!
Book of Cheney 1:1
No, Erdogan is just a brazen liar who hopes to get away with brazenly lying. Which so far he has.
“Membership has its benefits.” ( Membership in Obama’s Broad Coalition Axis of Jihad, that is . . . )
Apparently Sanders gave a speech at Georgetown that was encouraging regarding how he views foreign policy.
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/25/bernie_sanderss_refreshingly_sane_foreign_policy/
It IS refreshing to hear him state that some of our policies have led us to where we find ourselves today although I’d hardly argue that it was us “going it alone” that caused us to depose a democratically elected leader in Iran to install our own. Quite often our “good friends” come up with these brilliant ideas and we go along with them(or the other way around.)
I don’t see much difference between his views on foreign policy and Obama’s, though. I think he just wants to renegotiate the tab.
I think it’s new to hear someone say that our desire to depose every leader that doesn’t do what we want is a root cause of our problems is a refreshing viewpoint.
HSBC whistleblower Falciani sentenced to five years in prison
File under Corruption / Class Warfare / Let No Good Deed Go Unpunished.