The Secret History of the Cat Who Authored a Physics Paper Gizmodo (Chuck L). We’ve featured other versions of this incident, but it’s still a fun story.
About 80 Ducklings Found Dead in Lincoln Reflecting Pool NBC (furzy) :-(
This Guy Tried to Sail Across an Alaskan Channel in a Duct-Taped Raft Vice. Darwin Award wannabe.
Wow! mystery signal from space finally explained PhysOrg (EM)
Apple’s New iPhones May Miss Out on Higher-Speed Data Links Bloomberg. So Apple has crappified its computers to make them somehow more phone-like….and they are goofing up on their phones?
UK Election Aftermath
The youth for today: how the 2017 election changed the political landscape Guardian (UserFriendly)
The Facts Proving Corbyn’s Election Triumph Counterpunch
EU fears Brexit delay, uncertainty after shock UK vote Asia Times
Merkel: ‘EU ready to start Brexit talks’ BBC. Why do I interpret this as a poke in the eye?
Theresa May’s plans for hard Brexit in disarray as opponents say she has no mandate Daily Mirror
Theresa May fighting to stay in Downing St as senior Tories ponder leadership challenge Telegraph
Theresa May stares into the abyss after election disaster The Times. “A diminished prime minister was forced to promise Philip Hammond — the chancellor she was planning to sack — a greater say over Brexit as she faced up to the realities of having lost her absolute majority in an election she was under no pressure to call.”
Crippled Conservative Party forced to send a mayday for DUP after general election The Times
UK political chaos could accelerate Brexodus Politico
Ruth Davidson planning Scottish Tory breakaway as she challenges Theresa May’s Brexit plan Telegraph. Important. Davidson is ideally positioned to bring May down. She’s an established, tough pol of stature even before this election, where she played a big role in the Tory gains in Scotland. She’s also a lesbian and an alliance with DUP will be unacceptable to her. She needs very few to follow and May will no longer have her majority. And she may well pull more than the 13 Scottish Tory MPs, since May opponents who may not want to lead a campaign against her could rally around Davidson on the DUP and hard Brexit issues.
The DUP is Not Okay Benjamin Studebaker (UserFriendly)
Election latest: Theresa May tries to move on after humiliating result as critics begin to circle Independent
What connects Brexit, the DUP, dark money and a Saudi prince? Irish Times (Chris M)
This is the start of a tweetstorm (hat tip Richard Smith). Click through to read the whole thing. Important.
It's important not to let the DUP's general grossness overshadow just what a colossally irresponsible move this is from TM. It's INSANE.
— Jack Bernhardt (@jackbern23) June 9, 2017
Five reasons why the SNP lost seats in the general election Open Democracy
Worse terror attack on London Bridge foiled by chance, police say Guardian (furzy)
Brazil’s Temer survives court ruling that could have ended presidency DW
New Cold War
Russia’s Not the Country Benefitting Most from Trump Foreign Policy in Focus. Key sentence: “In between the withdrawals from the TPP and the Paris pact, the Trump administration has proceeded in a textbook manner to reduce U.S. influence in the world and give China a leg up.” Resilc: “But the DoD/CIA costs go up and up.”
Masha Gessen Offers A Plausible Trump-Russia Theory The Ezra Klein Show (podcast). UserFriendly: “Gessen trys to talk some sense into Klein.”
Syraqistan
Qatar crisis grows as Arab nations draw up terror sanctions list Guardian (furzy)
Qatar blockade: US urges Gulf states to ease restrictions BBC
Trump just slammed US ally Qatar an hour after his administration defended it Vox (furzy)
Walter Jones Understands The Tragedy In Afghanistan A Lot Better Than Señor Trumpanzee Or Paul Ryan DownWithTyranny (resilc)
Will the Mainstream Media Ever Report On the Numerous Admitted False Flag Terror Attacks? George Washington
Imperial Collapse Watch
Air Force grounds F-35A operations at training base after pilots suffered hypoxia ars technica (Chuck L). In case you haven’t seen it: AAA THE F-35 IS A LEMON PIERRE SPREY (RUNAWAY FIGHTER) FIFTH ESTATE EXTENDED INTERVW YouTube
Now The USAF Wants to Cut A-10 Squadrons and Stop Re-Winging The Fleet The Drive
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
China uncovers massive underground network of Apple employees selling customers’ personal data Hong Kong Free Press (UserFriendly)
Trump Transition
Trump’s biggest obstacle in getting things done: Trump McClatchy. Lambert: “Gridlock is our friend!”
Trump Team’s Shifts Jolt Some Allies and Soothe Others New York Times
Director James Comey testifmony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. C-SPAN (Kevin C)
Trump committed no crime. Democrats need to get over it. Washington Post. Lambert: “Ed Rogers is establishment Republican through-and-through. No James Baker, but in the Baker bucket, not the Bannon bucket. This will be listened to.”
Did Trump break the law: the case for and against Financial Times
Team Trump’s Response to Comey’s Testimony Is an Assault on Reason New York Magazine (resilc)
Trump’s lawyer: Comey violated executive privilege. 10 legal experts: No, he didn’t. Vox (furzy)
DOJ: Trump can accept payments from foreign governments The Hill
TRUMP: A TRUE STORY Washington Post (furzy)
Trump targets illegal immigrants who were given reprieves… CNBC
Trump hearings launch Kamala Harris Politico (resilc)
CDC: Americans with High Deductible Health Plans Skyrocket since ACA NonProfit Quarterly
Single-Payer is Not a Priority Even for Democrats Who Say They Support Single-Payer Counterpunch
Nuclear Regulators’ Flawed Analysis Leaves Millions at Risk From Radioactive Fires TruthOut
Kimberly Ellis Challenging Dem State Party Election Working Life (UserFriendly)
Puerto Rico prepares to vote on statehood USA Today
Puerto Rico is poised to cast a symbolic vote for statehood Economist
Wholesale Trade Report Worse Than Expected: 2nd Quarter Recovery Thesis Nearly Dead Michael Shedlock (EM)
Apple, Facebook, Amazon: Suddenly, Tech Stocks Are Getting Slammed Wall Street Journal
Forget the Trump rally, another powerful trade is ‘overwhelming everything’: El-Erian CNBC (furzy). The credit markets right before the crisis were liquidity-driven. The expression then was “wall of liquidity”.
Class Warfare
Japan to launch self-navigating cargo ships ‘by 2025’ BBC. I guarantee this wind up being pirates’ wet dream.
Class Resentment and the Center-Left, or the Politics of “We Are the 80%” Peter Dorman. Important.
Antidote du jour. From Timotheus: “Here is NC’s recurring cygnet from Story Lake IN, with this year’s offspring, half-grown.”
And a bonus from Robert H:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
211 comments
Comments are closed.
I don’t own an iPhone because since day one Apple has always held back a few obvious features [in the beginning it was copy-and-paste, now it’s G5 connectivity] in order to drive the upgrade cycle and milk the user base.
Eh… it’s kind of like the AppleTV not supporting 4K video support yet, there is not enough content to drive its inclusion (and with broadband caps and nationwide speeds being so variable, streaming 4K is a minuscule fraction of consumption).
It’s also because they are trying to avoid vendor lock-in with only using Qualcomm chips (I’d imagine it helps to keep the price per chip down). This is the whole reason Qualcomm is suing Apple, because Apple is detuning the modems from working at their maximum speeds. I’m pretty sure if this was a major factor in the next release of the iPhone, it would be integrated. iPhone users generally refresh every 2-3 years, so when this speed actually has real-world applications, the iPhone will have the modem to take advantage.
Biggest disappointment with my iPhone 6 Plus (aside from its randomly dying with “no power” every couple months, despite having between 21 and **67** percent remaining) is that iOS 9 has the two-finger-on-the-keyboard mouse thing on the iPad, but not the iPhone 6. Because it’s “too small”. The SAME SIZE iPhone 7 has it.
Grrr.
Re: tweet storm on NI, DUP and, ok, NI in general: I am not old enough to remember the height of tension with the IRA and such, though I did study it at university. Speaking to some friends who are older/do remember and friends who have heard from their parents on the issue, many still remember — very vividly — just how bad things were. It seems things are truly in danger of slipping backwards, with the inherent problems of brexit/a fluid Irish border. This hasn’t been sufficiently publicised, as far as I can, with the focus being primarily on how homophobic the DUP is. The BBC live blog has reported Sinn Fein is concerned about the effect this deal will have on the suspended power-sharing deal.
I thought the whole point of May was that she’s cautious (and yes, strong and stable — or something), but this does seem quite poorly thought through.
(And of course, in all fairness, what is the alternative? I don’t think Labour could scrounge together the numbers to form a majority either.)
Also, re: Ruth Davidson, it’s unsurprising. Her star has been rising in awhile (and it’s quite a treat watching her and Nicola Sturgeon spar). And at this juncture it makes sense.
On NI, from Buzzfeed: Northern Ireland Politicians Say Theresa May’s Dependence On The DUP Could Damage The Peace Process
https://www.buzzfeed.com/siobhanfenton/northern-ireland-politicians-say-theresa-mays-dependence-on?utm_term=.mnaMdNJBG#.nmjmWMBj6
“The peace process”? pp, I’m not teeing off on you, it’s just that the phrase you used stuck a wrong note for me.
Why does the phrase “the peace process” still get thought of and used as a “thing”? I’ve heard it for what, 60 years now? Korea “resolution of conflict,” Kissinger and Vietnam, of course “the Troubles” and The Irish Question and then the supposed standing-down of the Gun-Men on both sides of “the Line,” those charming Likudniks lying and stealing their way across the landscape, all those events and activities conducted before and behind that kick-the-can-down-the-road, hope-springs-eternal catch phrase. And one need not look very far to find “conflicts” of all genera that supposedly have been palliated if not resolved by past “peace processes,” like Europe East and West, and much of Africa, and the Indian sub-continent. Occasional lacunae with reduced violence, but always with enough collective memory and grievance, and of course weapons on tap, and “outside agitators” like our very own exceptional Empire, to so easily stir the always-simmering pot and trigger another boil-over. Out of the pot, onto the fire — why is there never quite enough spit out of the pot to actually smother and extinguish the flames, to allow the only “peace process” I have ever noted as functioning as pretended, an exhaustion of the energies of violence-as-fun-and-profit by passage of time and dying off of the raggedy old combatants and the family and tribes that drive them. Beirut: during the worst of the horrors there, the time of Sabra and Chatila, ordinary people still lived there, braved often fatal sniper fire to go out and buy bread and other necessities, and eventually things quieted down, but not permanently of course, Great Game play and Byzantine politics are always-on. And the people who live on the Emerald Isle? When, if ever, will the drivers of conflict be extinguished, how will the few who tend the fires and stoke them when the opportunity arises be turned to other more positive endeavours or disappear into the graveyards of the ancient churches?
“Peace process” may be a comfortable and comforting shibboleth, but it sure looks to me like that is all it is.
The original (and still the best!) Peace Process(tm) is of course the ongoing invasion and takeover of Palestine by Israel. The US has been facilitating this violent, ongoing effort to displace the inhabitants of Palestine and steal their land and water for many decades; this is invariably described in the US press as the “peace process in the Middle East.”
There is obviously no “peace” going on here, though there is a process! Noam Chomsky occasionally quips that the “peace process” is just whatever the US is doing at the moment.
True.
What term would you prefer?
Kayfabe? BS? Eyewash? Surely the thesaurus or the Street Dictionary must have some appropriate descriptives…
The pieces process…one piece for you…two pieces for him…three pieces for us…and a few crumbs for her…
!!!
sold!
Colonization seems the correct definition. Surprisingly, it is a very effective tool to divide nations and foment violence.
Well, I’m old enough to remember what it felt like in the 70s and 80s, when the government I was working for was actually much more worried about a potential Protestant backlash than about the IRA campaign, which it always reckoned (correctly) it could outlast. But if the Protestant majority ever felt they were being sold out, they had the numbers, the weapons and the sympathizers within the security establishment to create havoc on a scale that would have made the IRA campaign look like a football match by comparison. There was a real possibility of a civil war at some points, and it’s not certain that the Army and the Police could have been relied upon. Given the current political situation in the province, I just hope we are not in for a re-run. The fact that the DUP is uncomfortably close to the men with guns matters a great deal more, frankly, than their social attitudes being fifty years behind those of the Grauniad.
I’m from NI. The ability of Protestants to mount a sustained terrorist campaign is currently pitiful. The loyalist terrorist groups have not been serious since the 90s and although they occasionally still kill, they have always been unprofessionally organised compared to the IRA. This is especially true now that they are older, more rusty and more focused than ever on drugs and other gangsterism. Killing random Catholics from the phone book was never the same as taking on the armed forces of a great power.
The IRA have millions to re-arm when they like, and said only its “current campaign” was over and not the war, as the government is well aware, which is to prevent NI politics ever being taken in a more unionist direction. And then men IRA members killed in 2015 were killed with automatic weapons that IRA members had kept, or bought.
As for sympathisers in the security establishment, if you mean MI5 etc yes they seem to have concealed collusion and so on. Helping a new loyalist campaign is not the same. The home battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment were disbanded so that’s a potential crossover gone, the percentage of Protestants in the police has fallen and their skills too have been lost.
Gerry Adams said the peace process was in danger over benefit cuts. When the Tories got their majority SF implemented them anyway; the IRA isn’t gonna come back over such stuff, or Brexit, or a DUP-supported UK govt. As for “closeness”, the DUP broke with Ulster Resistance 30 yrs ago, which no longer exists and killed no one even if their guns shipment did in the hands of other loyalists. Even SF has not suggested the DUP are close to terrorism. As for Arlene Foster meeting a UDA man, stupid, not evil, same as Jezza meeting Adams and McGuinness after the 2015 killings. (So did the Tory-appointed British ambassador to Dublin, which called those deaths “bumps in the road”)
May’s hypocrisy over Corbyn vs the DUP consoles Labour losers but the fact remains JC could have got a majority if he got the DUP’s help and may need them in 2022.
The idea that the DUP under its current leadership would support Labour (and indeed that Labour would want DUP support) goes beyond the realms of conjecture and into the realms of pure fantasy. You might as well say that the Tories are going to support Labour as the next UK government.
And I like how you justify one group of terrorists over another: ‘Our terrorists aren’t as bad as yours.’
And again show us one verifiable piece of evidence that any organisation in Ireland has massive amounts of money stashed away beyond that asserted by a journalist who sources their statement from an unnamed and unsourced Garda. Real evidence – not conjecture – not fantasy.
And Arlene recently meeting with a representative of terrorist organisation isn’t, as you say, affiliation. It’s much closer. It’s actual communication.
Oh, and being from somewhere does not make one an authority.
Being from somewhere? You said “I live in Scotland” on another thread!
It doesn’t go beyond the realm of conjecture — they kept the possibility of deals with any party open in 2015 and emphasised it during the campaign and in their literature. “More Votes. More Seats. More Influence. More for Northern Ireland”. Similar to the SNP saying more seats = more power for Scotland. The difference was the DUP didn’t say they would lock the Tories out of Downing Street.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-32479185
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-31045870
I have not justified any group of terrorists in any way and you should withdraw that remark. I said I believed loyalists have poor CAPABILITY to carry out attacks compared to the PIRA, today. David said in the 70s and 80s Prods would have been able to “create havoc on a scale that would have made the IRA campaign look like a football match”. That is no longer true.
“ANY organisation”? Hohoho! You do realise the IRA and others raised money for 40 years? So there isn’t fuel laundering and cigarette smuggling on a large scale? There is no Criminal Assets Bureau and Asset Recovery Agency to deal with it? Money isn’t raised by “any” of the terrorist groups in this list because they would only kill and not steal? (About 34 killed by loyalists since 2002, and 27 by republicans) http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/violence/deathsfrom2002draft.htm
Communication is not “closer” than affiliation. Ask Jezza, meeting SF after 2 murders by IRA men. It does not show he supports the IRA, it just makes for an embarrassing photo op. (The DUP has communicated around a Cabinet table with SF Ministers who are IRA members for ten years now.) Likewise meeting a UDA man is not evidence of support for the UDA. This is not hard to understand. Neither Corbyn nor Foster should have done these things if they didn’t want to be criticised.
To Darn as well: it’s very good to hear from those with actual experience of those times — for me, everything is second-hand. I hope this isn’t a re-run either. A re-run + Brexit + general Parliamentary chaos = recipe for disaster. As though one isn’t enough!
And even if it isn’t a re-run in the sense of violence, increasing polarisation in what seems to be a fragile situation is quite unappetising.
Also, the DUP said they were supporting the Tories in part to keep Labour out. And unfortunately, short of Tories defecting, Jezza just can’t make the numbers.
Yes purplepencils the polarisation in NI is bad but was already happening in the Assembly elections. And indeed has been ongoing since 2005 when the DUP and SF became the biggest two parties. Each community wants to drive the hardest bargain. T
Yes the DUP wants to keep Jezza out, I’m very sad he could not win them over by coming out more clearly and early against the IRA. The massive Tory use of the issue makes it even harder for them to be seen to go along with him because of their constituents. And he needed to prevent losing votes over it in GB in any case.
to purplepencils:
Time can only tell how things will play out in the six counties. I’m hoping for the best, but Tory/DUP (as natural allies) marriage doesn’t bode well for the short and medium term. Of course polarisation is the foundation of the original six county state and time nor the peace process has not fundamentally altered that status unfortunately.
I read somewhere before Martin McGuinness (Sinn Fein) died that he stated that the current UK government really didn’t understand or didn’t care to understand about the current dynamics in the six counties. (I’ll try and ferret out the article.) This is a fairly serious statement given that McGuinness, as Deputy First Minister, has worked with Ian Paisley, Peter Robinson and, indeed, Arlene Foster; although the latter relationship was fraught to say the least and the assembly brought down over their differences.
As for the contention that somehow Corbyn’s stance on the troubles cost him the election, well, I let everyone make up their own minds.
Former deputy chairman of the Tory Party, Michael Ashcroft:
“… surveyed over 14,000 people on election day who had already cast their vote to help understand how this unexpected result came about…”
The five biggest issues for the Aggregate UK electorate were:
1. Brexit – 28%
2. NHS – 17%
3. Economy – 8%
4. Right leadership – 8%
5. Immigration 6%
The five biggest issues for the Tory UK electorate were:
1. Brexit – 48%
2. Right Leadership – 13%
3. Economy – 11%
4. Immigration 9%
5. Terrorism/security – 7%
The five biggest issues for the Labour UK electorate were:
1. NHS – 33%
2. Spending cuts – 11%
3. Brexit – 8%
4. Poverty – 7%
5. Economy/jobs 6%
Only the Tory electorate mention security in their top five and nowhere in the 161 page report is Corbyn’s past considered a prime issue. Maybe the researchers didn’t think it warranted a mention? (Strangely enough on p. 41 where the security question is broken down by demographics only 3% aged 65+ registered it as a concern – strange because the Tory voter tends to be older.)
http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2017/06/result-happen-post-vote-survey/
(Note he has an entire PDF of his data findings that can be downloaded)
As for the supposition of the DUP supporting the Labour Party in government? Well, it would be somewhat like US Tea party candidates demanding that Hillary Clinton become President.
On the other hand, I just can’t imagine any instance when Jeremy Corbyn or the Labour party would remotely consider any dalliance with the DUP.
best regards
Wise up. What the Tories say about Jezza’s past costs him points on both “right leadership” and “terrorism/security”. The video would not have been shared 1 million times if ppl weren’t interested. The campaign wouldn’t have complained if it wasn’t a worry. I have another post to you, on Labour+DUP possibilities which is stuck in moderation presumably due to a lot of links. For now, let me say the party’s 2015 stance of not extending gay marriage to NI (unlike civil partnerships which Labour passed for the whole UK and started in NI a day early) seemed to be in case Miliband needed DUP support in a hung parliament.
Not sure about Jezza, but it seems the DUP already thought this through, in anticipation of having to deal with either Miliband or Cameron in the event of a hung election.
Yes I think that’s exactly right, because if Jezza realised DUP MPs can affect the result he would have dealt with the IRA accusation clearly and early. DUP seem to have expected Tory victory this time though because unlike the 2015 campaign they didn’t talk about a hung parliament all the time.
Another element is Washington’s influence – the days of George Mitchell are long gone. No amabassador in Dublin ATM, according to wikipedia.
I was in London about a month after the Canary Wharf bombing in ’96. Suffice it to say, things were… more than just tense. It was the end to a fairly long ceasefire, a ceasefire that ended due in no small part to complete intransigence and an unwillingness to participate in the political process (I’m simplifying things a bit, but when I read about the constitutional crisis in NI, shades of the Troubles immediately come to mind). London has experienced three terrorist attacks in short succession, do we really want to add IRA/Unionist shenanigans back into the mix?
The Good Friday accords only came about because people were willing to set aside their grudges and embrace a vision of the future, uneasy as it was. Playing with people’s hopes like this, in the current geopolitical environment, is likely to lead not just to despair, but to carnage. Yet, TM and the Tories seem hell bent on sticking their heads in the sand.
TM is classic, do as I say and not as I do. Labour would do well to remind the people once in awhile exactly how we got here and what she’s said. Not everyday of course.
But quite honestly, I also don’t see what is the alternative at this point. What do others think? I may just be quite unimaginative currently!
I find it interesting, and frankly unimaginative, that recent “terrorist” attacks have focused on killing people.
They’d get way more bang for their buck focusing on vulnerable infrastructure, like the electrical grid, important central phone switches, etc. I wonder if an IRA 2.0 would leverage limited resources that way.
Yves,
This was exactly the strategy of the ANC. Mandela wrote in his autobiography
that they tried to avoid just killing people because they would have to live with the
white population in the future. On the other hand, blowing up infrastructure was
good in getting attention and blowing up the electrical grid on a hot day was one
way of making wealthy people uncomfortable.
“Air Force grounds F-35A operations at training base after pilots suffered hypoxia”
F-22 pilots had the same problem.
…a failure to fix or a failure to learn?
Crapification?
Oxygen for pilots flying at high altitudes used to be a known and routine technology.
–Gaianne
So the Scottish LGBT mafia gets “assurances” from May? That’s nice to know. Seriously from this US observer is Davidson typical of the “fiscally conservative but socially liberal” neolib scum we have here in America?
She’s a tory, gets an easy ride from the media, hangs out with orange lodge headbangers.
Anti brexit then pro brexit
Not a single original thought in her head.
Happily quotes bad news from nhs england as supposed evidence of the snp’s failures.
Deplores the DUP’s sexual positions but refuses to differ on the requirement of rape victims to prove they were raped to obtain further child tax credits
Voted against all SNP measures to mitigate her party’s vindictiveness towards the working poor,unemployed and disabled.
She’s the leader the establishment want, not what scotland (or anyone else) needs.
Yep, a limo lesbian. Like Hillary, as Marco correctly alludes, quite happy to let it all hang out in terms of liberal social reform (unless you’re on the green side of the orange/green divide in which case no doubt believes Hell justifiably awaits you, although Davidson always manages to have plausible deniability and can profess “disappointment” and “takes steps” if anything bubbles to the surface) but slightly to the right of Benito Mussolini economically-speaking.
In terms of being “troubled” by the DUP’s LGBT rights animosity, May has a lot of (bad) form there herself, too https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/31/theresa-may-under-fire-for-changing-her-mind-about-gay-rights.
George Osborne savages Theresa May (Torygraph) should be here.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448513/trump-james-comey-fbi-director-russia-investigation-fired-misleading-public
In this week’s written testimony, Comey further related that he “briefed the leadership of Congress on exactly which individuals we were investigating and . . . told those Congressional leaders that we were not personally investigating President Trump” (emphasis added). This was done, of course, out of the public earshot. And — mirabile dictu! — it seems to be the only detail the intelligence community and plugged-in Democrats have resisted leaking to the media.
============================================
So much for me not commenting – I saw “mirablile dictu” and I couldn’t help noting it. The posting yesterday about Cardinal Richelieu from Fabius Maximus seems pertinent:
“That was how Cardinal Richelieu was said to have put it nearly 400 years ago. “Let me have six lines from the hand of the most honorable of men, and I will find therein wherewith to hang him.”
Well, I don’t think Comey is all that DIShonorable or that Trump is all that honorable, but it certainly is a good example of finding (publishing) what you want and not finding (publishing) what you don’t want.
On an entirely unrelated matter, for those who think government can never do anything right***, I am probably alive right now because even in a relatively small city like Paso Robles we have expensive trucks, filled with high tech equipment, and staffed by highly trained and professional paramedics and firefighters who reached me in a medical emergency within …at most, a minute (well, staying at a downtown motel helped). The emergency room doctor said he couldn’t say I would have died for sure, but I probably would have.
It did screw up my Medicare HICAP training, but there will be other days for that….
***you know, I didn’t consider maybe we would be better off with me gone….They sent five people – maybe that was “overkill” …uh, oversave?
Glad you are still alive right now. Shocked you are not in Fresno.
Eudora Welty
June 10, 2017 at 8:14 am
I was taking a little wine tasting vacation – it was great….except for that last part (this happened on the morning I was gonna check out of the motel and go back to Fresno).
It taught me a lesson full of good wine*** and food, the most prudent course of action is DON’T LEAVE!
*** BTW, Wine had nothing to do with the event. It was a “spontaneous airway event” – like asthma even though I had never had asthma before and since coming back to CA from the east coast I haven’t had any allergies…..
Dan, thanks for pointing out that ‘government’ does have a role in improving the quality of life of all of us. And, on the local scale, who is ‘government’ but a group of our neighbors who work together?
And, EMT’s and firefighters are on my little list of people who are trustworthy, admired and chose their profession because they truly want to help make our world a better place. Nurses and National Park Rangers make my list also. And, nursery and kindergarten teachers.
I used to work with a guy who did EMT and Ski Patrol, besides selling cameras with me. He was a super nice guy, but he wasn’t in the EMT game to make the world a better place — he was in it because he thought it was super-interesting to see all the broken bones and whatnot up close and personal. Some may be in it to make the world a better place, but some are just adrenaline junkies, or have personal interests that are a bit macabre…just sayin’. Whatever their reasons, of course, they deserve our appreciation and respect.
And, Dan, I for one am glad you were ‘saved.’ We would certainly miss your presence at NC! Hope you are all recovered.
Yes … who else would wear red antennaed bunnies slippers whilst eating a fabulous Fresno fair taco, naked, grooving with the Picts … I mean Chicks, or maybe both …. ?!!
Glad to see you still among the living, fresno dan ! ‘;)
polecat
June 10, 2017 at 1:00 pm
This happened on the day I was gonna check out after my winery tours and head back to Fresno – a delightful 3 day sojourn….I was “up” at my usual 4 am….and at my age, you gotta spank the monkey when you can. Afterwards, when cleaning off the emissions from my tentacles, breathing seemed much more strenuous than it should be….
So I thought I should just breathe….let me tell you, when that doesn’t work it gets pretty frightening pretty fast. Fortunately, I got (just) my pants on before the paramedics arrived….and when you got 8 legs, that is no small feet…uh, feat.
So Children, let this be a warning about choking the chicken.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Was bare-chested Putin to blame? That guy has a lot to answer for, or so the Democrats tell me at least.
Very glad you are still with us, and thanks for the reminder about non-useless government services. (We might even say highly non-useless).
Glad you are okay, FD.
Colleen Rowley In one quick letter reminds us just how dishonorable Comey (and Mueller) have been over the years.
And here is a very interesting refresher course, if we ever knew what actually happened in the first place, on the conduct of the mueller / comey dynamic duo during the “investigation of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks that took five lives and infected 17 other people, shut down the U.S. Capitol and Washington’s mail system, solidified the Bush administration’s antipathy for Iraq, and eventually, when the facts finally came out, made the FBI look feckless, incompetent, and easily manipulated by outside political pressure.”
http://www.ocregister.com/2017/05/21/comey-mueller-bungled-big-anthrax-case-together/
I’m glad you’re still with us, Fresno Dan, bunny slippers and all.
Glad you decided to stick around for a bit longer. We would have sorely missed you!
Glad you made it and you’re not cooperating with the Just Hurry Up And Die Faster plan.
The abscence of headlines of Comey saying O-Team did what there are accusing Trump of doing yet didn’t, struck me, too. The Fake News regarding Russia is out of control. This is a snapshot of how it spills into a co worker of mine who’s a Team Bluer: Him: “Flynn is going to jail. He took 10k making him a PAID AGENT of a FOREIGN GOVERNMENT!” Me: “What about the money being funneled through the Clinton Foundation while she was Sec of State? Why are only people who support good relations with Russia being investigated?” Him: “Trump owns HOTELS IN RUSSIA!!” Me: “What’s wrong with that?” Him: “Putin’s a TYRANT!” Me: “Obama assassinated American children and bombed more nations than Hitler how many children and nations did Putin kill?” Him: “He invaded Ukraine and no one in this room will agree with you that Obama assassinated children it was collateral damage!”
IIRC, Trump does not own hotels in Russia.
He does own hotels in Saudi Arabia.
Breaking:
“Maddow reveals new information linking Trump to the death of Vince Foster”!
Guessing Lucifer can unpack now and tear up that resignation letter he was going to have hand delivered to the pearly gates…glad to hear you wont be forcing good olde luke into early retirement…
Get well soon. We need you here.
Fresno dan, hope you get better soon!
Emergency responders I’ve met are just incredible people.
Agreed. Saved my life in 2010. Fast response and smart thinking. Adrenaline or not, it’s work that requires good training and a clear mind.
You may be sick of hearing it by this point, but no we would NOT be better off with you gone, though we are better off every time you break your vow of abstinence from commentary.
There’s no such thing as “oversave” (can you imagine yourself or anyone here applying that logic to anotherperson?). But for sure there’s the scandal of artificial scarcity (which in the end is hard to tell apart from “the rights of property”/”a debt is a debt is a debt”) and the poisonous idea that sending five people and trucks full of equipment must always somehow be at “someone else’s expense”.
It reminds me a bit of our unlamented ex-mayor Boris Johnson’s decision a few years back to close something like a third of London’s fire stations. The rationale was: “1. We have a “target” for the “acceptable” number of fire-related deaths per year. 2. The Fire Brigade has consistently “beaten” that target (i.e. allowed fewer people die). 3. Ergo, the firefighters have overshot the mark! It’s too easy for them; too few fire deaths means firefighters are underworked, understressed and overequipped. So fire them! (so to speak) and let them go and work in private security contracting where they’re really needed.
Epilogue: the “redundant” fire station buildings now enjoy a happy afterlife as Stunning upscale apartments. Who would have thought?
clinical wasteman
June 11, 2017 at 12:28 am
Thanks for the good wishes and you are exactly right. As I always say, it is a political decision to have unemployment, inequality, and “undersaving” of people – I am very grateful that they sent more than necessary rather than fewer!
Aiee, sorry to hear about your health crisis but glad you got through it.
Self-navigating pirate ships?
(“Arrrgghh 2.0”)
The seas are plied already by a whole bunch of functionally self-navigating behemoths. I helped deliver a 38-foot sailboat from Hawaii to San Fran in the mid-’80s. We encountered over 100 ships during the 19-day voyage. We radioed every one of them to let them know our little boat was in their water. We got a response from less than a quarter of them, and those responses included people who barely spoke English, who were by their voices half-asleep, and a couple were willing to discuss their technological resources, to say that radar was set to a “watch” function and that even when they powered it up, they could not see us for the “sea clutter.” And also offered that Otto the Autopilot was actually performing the steering function, to drive the vessel along the Great Circle cheapest shortest route from port to port. The most encounters were as we were crossing ‘shipping lanes” like the route between Long Beach and Yokohama, I recall it was 8 ships going up and down the course with loads of slick Japanese automobiles and trucks for the “US Market.” This along a stretch of our route of maybe 20 miles, over 6 or 8 hours as we sailed slowly along.
Those vessels were already largely autonomous as to course-keeping and power settings and such. These vessels already had minimal crew, under the “regulations” set by flag-of-convenience, race-to-the-bottom nations. And quite a few mopes who dare to set sail on small boats to go see the world via the “free oceans” have been run down, to die or survive with their horror stories of deprivation and thirst. While the Great Beasts of Trade lumber along, unheeding and careless, as they plow those huge long furrows across the seas. And of course the reduction in crew to zero is just a small step for mankind, and the automation in all aspects of shipping proceeds apace. To what end? Wait, wait, don;t tell me!…
And of course losses to pirates are just priced into the “goods” (sic) we mopes just have to have, made in other race-to-the-bottom places where our political economy has been migrated to…
And Theresa May loses at least one aide: Nick Timothy resigns. I expect Faith Hill to as well, considering how a former cabinet minister has alleged that she told a senior government official to [censored] off.
There is a great deal of outrage and vitriol against the two chiefs of staff. To some extent, this may be viewed as scape-goating, but there has actually been a lot of unhappiness about how the two have managed Downing St, conversations about policy and access to May herself. Presumably they were behind the replacement of 5 perm secs when May came to power. The Torygraph (see article on Ruth Davidson) also reports that Fiona Hill (of the [censored] off berating) tried to manhandle the Scottish Tories. Fiona Hill was also the aide involved in the spat with Michael Gove a few years back.
So this isn’t new; the unhappiness has been there. But it seems wrong to place so much of the blame on them as well. May has a brain. She should use it. She’s the leader. She should lead.
So, good riddance to bad rubbish, but man, I can smell the glee and relief of many Tories and civil servants!!
May may not be around much longer. Her two key aides have resigned but two-thirds of her party members seem also to want her out (see below). Has she thrown them to the wolves in an attempt to save herself?
The UK starts Brexit negotiations in nine days but without an agreed strategy and without a leader who can be expected to be there until they are concluded.
And, according to Terry, a majority would now vote to stay in the EU.
Could the UK make a worse mess of things than it already has? Time will tell.
http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2017/06/our-snap-survey-two-in-three-conservative-party-members-say-that-may-should-announce-her-resignation.html
Thanks for the link! After digging around there I feel compelled to share one for the egg-on-face department, Lord Ashcroft: The estimated Conservative majority grows in my final model, in which on election morning the aforesaid Lord predicted a 76 seat Tory majority.
It’s the GIGO principle – give a man a spreadsheet and he’ll believe 3 preposterous things before breakfast.
Anon2 – You ask:
“Could the UK make a worse mess of things than it already has? Time will tell.”
May I remind you that when it comes to foreign policy, and indeed much else in our world, there are numerous examples of successes which emerged from so-called failures.
The Marshall Plan being one fine example:- https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2017-06-08/how-marshall-plan-emerged-failure?cid=int-lea&pgtype=hpg
Emma
Thank you for an interesting read. Let us hope the UK finds a Marshall.
http://i68.tinypic.com/5pqzwo.jpg (will open as html page)
Probably trip the SkyNet but, that’s a screen shot I took from the crawl on the Telegraph web page the week before the election. It’s virtually throwing her under the bus publishing that, then.
It probably no longer has the geopolitical clout to match the mess it made of the world c.1660-1945, but I wouldn’t put it past them.
From the pink paper:
“Senior cabinet members, notably chancellor Philip Hammond, also made it clear that it was intolerable that they have been second-guessed, countermanded or even insulted by Mrs May’s chiefs of staff.
The fact that most cabinet ministers have refused to publicly defend the prime minister after the election debacle is partly a sense of their frustration with Mrs May, partly a sign that they are waiting to see if she heeded their advice.”
Too many links has been a common refrain recently. Certainly there’s been a lot going on out there. Perhaps the time is ripe for a meta-discussion, not about a particular link, but about NC links in general.
Please take it as read that this isn’t lack of appreciation for the excellent offerings of the NC Gang of Three, I can only imagine how much work goes into serving up the daily feast. But I’d be happy to see:
o Less links from the MSM, particularly pay-walled sites, that offer up the usual propaganda and stenography. Sure, we all need to be aware of that junk, and the occasional critique is valuable, but mostly, unless it reveals something that wasn’t better reported elsewhere, why bother.
o Less links to really short “my time is money” business-style articles that say very little, and mainly try to “frame and explain” something off the wire to confirm the biases of their target readership.
o No military fanboy stuff, such as today’s article from “The Drive”, unless important.
o A reduced number of different-but-same bloviating MSM versions of beat-ups and non-stories such as evidence free Russian link assertions, Comey testimony, today’s POTUS madness and lies, etc.
I’ve also got some ideas about what I’d like to see a bit more of, and am willing to try to contribute, but that’s enough from me for now, I’m sure others have plenty to say.
And if somehow this is against site policy (which I’ve read), apologies in advance.
Words. An off-topic comment.
I searched the page for “drive” to quickly find the article from The Drive you refer to in your 3rd bullet. I think it’s interesting that it turns out drive is already mentioned 7 times (counting your bullet) on this page, and it’s early!
Once is actually “driven,” and JTMcPhee says drive and drivers, and our first commenter says drive as well.
I pronounce today’s word to be Drive!
Peewee Herman’s Playhouse rule was when someone says the secret word of the day, we all are supposed to scream real loud. Given the drivers that are driving all the drives that drive the Great global world, looks to a lot of us that the bus is already more than half off the cliff…
EEEEYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…
This is just a personal preference, not a site recommendation (y’all do amazing work – many thanks), but I don’t spend much time reading articles that speculate about some distant future political thing that might happen, particularly ones based on hearsay. In general, if it’s not about an actual thing that actually happened, or bonafide evidence of a likely or inevitable future event (e.g. climate science) I skip it.
On a related note, I also rarely bother looking at the minutia of bills that are evidently unpassable as written (except things like budgets and debt ceilings which will cause all heck to break loose if they can’t be passed).
I’m with you on this one. It annoys me to read pieces which amount to mental masturbation, as the solutions recommended have no possibility whatsoever of coming to pass.
If you’ve ever been asked to implement a boondoggle because leaders need to declare victory, knowing it’s a bad decision and that you are your teams will be adversely affected if not later blamed for its problems, you might not see the A10 story as fanboy service.
Are you saying precious seconds of your time are wasted seeing whether something is interesting?
No complaints here. I’d say we should be grateful that the proprietors take the time to give us Links and Water Cooler at all. Not many sites do this.
Thank you!! I love the links. And often what doesn’t interest me in the morning is just the thing in the afternoon.
Agree, I’m reading comments and every ones link in between cleaning house. UGH :(
Hmmm. It’s the proprietors that have been lamenting “too many links”. I think it was Yves who recently wrote that it cuts into her time for generating original posts. I am reacting to that. Just some ideas for how a little judicious pruning might be achieved.
I’m biased, but I’d like to see more independent reporting from Monkey Dude. He’s been repeating a lot of Trump jokes too, lately. Called him an “Orange Haired Human”! Hahahaha. That’s really funny, coming from Monkey Dude.
Also said someone found a physics paper co-authored by Trump and a physicist. But no one believed it. Hahahahaha!
Orange-haired human:
Avast and forsooth, mateys!
I am just curious if Bitcoin is the dotcom stocks this time…
“Should I get in now?”
I actually like seeing a ton of links. My bad days are the occasional ones where few or no links are there. So please keep it up!
I would however like to second the point about paywalled links. The vast majority of us have neither the resources nor the inclination to send gobs of money to the WSJ, Economist, etc. This is not a statement that sites shouldn’t have the option to charge for their content, but a recognition that such content is inaccessible to for the most part.
So IMO paywalled links should be deprecated on NC, and perhaps prominently marked (in color?) to make it easier for those of us of modest means to filter them out.
I am much better informed due to the huge menu of links. Even if I don’t get to read most of them, the headlines tell me things I wouldn’t know otherwise. Of course, the comments by Yves, as well as Lambert in the pm, add immense value. So, I have no suggestions. If it ain’t broke…
Hear, Hear
As far as I’m concerned, the more Links the better. They’re a huge time saver and I appreciate all the hard work you all put into them. They give me a quick outline of the narratives being pushed on all sides along with links to actual reporting and thoughtful critiques and analysis that I would be hard pressed to find on my own. And thanks for providing MSM links so I don’t have to wade through the crap on those sites myself.
I agree. The links pages in NC are how I start my day. This is the best aggregation site for English-language news that I know of. I appreciate the range of coverage. There appears to be less FIRE oriented coverage lately, and I don’t quite know why. I suspect it broadly reflects the distribution of news articles day-to-day. The MSM is saying less about economic activity lately, perhaps. Unwisely I suspect. There seems to be a great deal of socio-economic turmoil below the perception threshold.
There have never ever been too many links in either Links or the Water Cooler. I second “the more Links the better.” Very happy with things as they are, and thankful.
So I guess you never noticed Yves’ complaints about too many links to deal with, and not enough time for original posts.
Perhaps if everyone wanting more scaled their support in proportion to the number of links, NC could pay more people to help out.
There is no force involved in the links section, its purely an editorial consideration by the proprietors.
That said YS has been spending considerable time wrt the Calipers imbroglio and attending important functions, where thought is shaped and how that corresponds to social outcomes. It is an admirable undertaking by any means and she throws herself at it with abandon, too her own determent in some circumstances. I applaud.
disheveled… it is arduous to remain relevant, have sufficient fingers in critical pies, whilst making enough money to service such endeavors.
fewer links
Heh, heh. Just so. Plural nouns are preceded by fewer. Singular nouns are preceded by less.
Less filling
Yep I support that. Perhaps they could simply be clustered under a heading “MSM and trivia” and leave readers to skip over it. That should definitely include anything of the guardian.
Some links to thinkers like mainlymacro dot blogspot dot com dot au and people with an economic/political analysis would be nice and the odd Varoufakis etc link? The Canary gives good material occasionally and so does Jonothan Pie for a good laugh/cry. I like discovering informative fringe thinkers.
What is the first and foremost primary concern in the NC mission statement.
Critical thinking[.]
disheveled…. if that is a drama one can always flick over to the Von Mises site or its contemporaries…..
In re Single-Payer is Not a Priority Even for Democrats Who Say They Support Single-Payer the writer quotes a letter:
Kirkwood calls for a campaign to recruit and run single payer doctors for Congress.
I would suggest before or at least in tandem that establishing a binding platform/process within parties is paramount or too many will continue to represent the rich above all else. And that doctors experienced with systems such as tri-care/ VA would be best. Recruiting nurses would probably be best of all if for no other reason the Drs are accustomed to much higher income than public office pays.
Also been thinking about points made recently in which we are reminded Single Payer is not socialized medicine… I wonder if it would be helpful to pen a bill no longer than HR 676 which is socialized medicine…. if for no other reason than to create an overton window left of 676?
Remember that nurses were viciously excluded from the Obama-gamed “health care legislation drafting.” Gee, I wonder why? Maybe cuz they collectively know all the warts and lesions and deformities on the corpus of “The World’s Greatest Medical System?” And were interested primarily in providing actual needed health care and health promotion to the mopes?
I second the notion re having nurses drive the health-care bus, with the caveat that nurses are human, all too human, too. And subject to subornation and distraction and deflection and self-interest. Less so than maybe the run of physicians, which cadre also still includes some very decent and caring people, but then there’s the others…
But having worked as a male in the “estrogen-enriched environment” of many nursing settings, I can aver that there’s a reason that my Continuing Education includes segments on “failures of cooperative nursing” and “bullying in the workplace” as admonitions seeking to palliate some pretty obnoxious aspects of punching out and kicking down that are part of the panoply of “nursing behaviors.”
That said, the National Nurses Association, I believe, is one of the primary drivers of “single payer,” and the players in that group are well versed in the ins and outs of the political game. I would also note that the NNA is only for RNs, which excludes about half of all nurses, us lowly folks who only have the “licensed practical nurse” credential and maybe a bunch of specialty certifications that add up to the same skill level and scope of practice as the RNs, just those with the vaunted RN plus all those extra degrees and certifications that many nurses insist on appending to their signature blocks…
Democrats:
Where appearing to fight for a thing is better than actually achieving it.
Yes. I expect every plank in the Sanders platform will soon be appropriated by corporate dems who will shower us with protestations about how they have always been “fighting for…[enter concrete universal benefit here]” and how they are going to “start a national discussion about…[Sanders plank X]”. All whilst stalling to ensure nothing ever changes for the better.
Even if the neolib wing of the party did actually want real universal benefits, such as free college for all (spoiler alert: they don’t), they still wouldn’t have the foggiest notion how to actually organise to achieve these goals because concrete benefits are not in their DNA. If it doesn’t entail ankle grabbing for corporate donors, it’s not in their playbook.
Interesting to see the Boston Globe commenting on what neoliberalism does to universal benefit ideas.
‘Free college’ shows how big ideas always get sanded down
Also talks about Cuomo’s approach for SUNY
The Democrats are better at foreplay than the Republicans but in the end we’re still f*cked.
That’s called acting.
In certain places, good acting is really appreciated.
Though I wouldn’t call California a phony state, and throw out all those electoral votes.
This seems needlessly restrictive. Why doctors or nurses? Why not just recruit the best people? Am I to understand Kirkwood wouldn’t run Bernie because he lacks a medical degree?
The point is to provide resources and consistent messaging. “Why is Senator Romney (if Biden gets his way) making healthcare decisions for young women?” This is the kind of thing I imagine they would run, maybe not as adversarial.
Obviously, Bill Frist is the counter example, and doctors are a bunch of right wing loons. Of course, some of this is virtue signaling. Left/liberal sympathizers might be less likely to remain silent with more prominent Doctors advocating a Sanders style message.
Its kind of like endorsements for candidates too. Hillary’s endorsements didn’t matter because she was already Hillary. Sanders endorsers mattered because he’s some guy from Vermont. It helps find people who are not necessarily tuned in, to help them come out.
Ruth Davidson has denied the story of a possible separate party. Here is a BBC story, hope the link comes through:
Probably this: Ruth Davidson: ‘No plans for breakaway party’
I don’t think a breakaway party is on the cards, but there are precedents for parties to become sort of independent ‘associates’ of the main party, I suspect that is what Davidson wants. It might be similar to the Scottish Labour Party, which is part of, but semi-independent of the main Labour Party. In reality, it would mean giving themselves the power to tell London to stuff it if they don’t like what they are being told to do.
The interesting wrinkle in all this is that Davidson is a lesbian in a relationship with a catholic from the Republic of Ireland. The Conservatives new bride in London, the DUP, are unreformed old school homophobes. Davidson, in addition to other more liberal sections of the Conservatives may well seek to completely disassociate themselves from the government if the DUP seek to stifle equality legislation – although I suspect the DUP will be too politically canny to push that issue.
I don’t think the electoral commision sees it that way.
“Dear XXXXX,
Thank you for your response.
A candidate cannot stand for an accounting unit during an election; only for a registered party. An accounting unit, Scottish Labour Party for example, may appear as a description of the registered party on the ballot paper. The Electoral Commission does not regulate the content of campaign material. A party may present themselves under an accounting unit if they choose.
Kind regards
Jack Goodman
Guidance Adviser
Party and Election Finance
The Electoral Commission
The registered party is uk labour, an accounting unit such as scottish labour can call itself what it likes but it legally represents the registered (UK) party and can only represent their policies.
I can’t see davidson creating a legally independent party in scotland. They might just have the money but they wouldn’t have the manpower. People with zimmers and rangers tops wouldn’t cut it on the ground.
Besides, I rather think, after her 35-13 ‘victory’ and the consequent publicity, she may have her sights on higher things within the union.
As to your last point, yes, I’ve heard her name come up as a potential challenger to May, she is certainly a more substantial figure than May ever was and her stock is very high in the party now.
I would say she is even less substantial than May, and even more unpleasant. There’s an absurd amount of promotion going on.
She’s never held any office, doesn’t bother herself with policy and for someone who calls referendums divisive, is happy to exploit the rather divisive orange order.
She regularly gets her arse handed to her by sturgeon in FMQ’s. No wonder she fancies escaping to some safe seat in england.
There is nothing there but careerism.
No wonder she fancies escaping to some safe seat in england
Apparently she fancies it less than you seem to think:
Andy McIver: I’m sorry to bring more bad news, but Davidson won’t be heading to Westminster
To summarize this promo piece, the main game is Holyrood, and she doesn’t like Westminster because too many people are mean to her there. But there’s more:
There are two other reasons why a southern move is not on the cards. Firstly, Davidson has settled in Edinburgh with her partner, Jen. As she said in a newspaper article last week, she left Glasgow to go to Edinburgh for love.
That is not to say Davidson is not eyeing up a move. She is. But here’s the problem for the Tories in England who want her in their team. The move she’s eyeing up is not to Downing Street. It is to Bute House, the residence of the First Minister of Scotland.
The latter move seems particularly unlikely. But Scottish tories have to dream.
Maybe if they restrict the franchise to BBC Scotland and members of the press.
I wonder what she could offer us?
Health privatisation,strip planning restrictions and cut social programmes?
Not too tempting.
Perhaps all this puffery is just designed to make her look a bigger fish than she is.
Davidson has got Tory seats in Scotland back through tactical voting by unionists to keep the SNP out, especially if they had wrongly assumed Corbyn’s Labour were unelectable. She needs to protect her left flank from Labour and the SNP, so the DUP hookup gives her an image problem. There is no prospect of the DUP harming LGBT in tandem with the Tories; the DUP have nowhere to go, and antidiscrimination law is statutory. And half of Tory MPs voted for gay marriage.
Will the Mainstream Media Ever Report On the Numerous Admitted False Flag Terror Attacks? George Washington
————-
Presenting point 8 in light of 9/11. Some think that the collapse patterns fit better with the use of small nuclear explosive devices.
————-
(8) Israel admits that in 1954, an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this).
The U.S. Army does not believe this is an isolated incident. For example, the U.S. Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies said of Mossad (Israel’s intelligence service):
“Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act.”
Then there is Pearl Harbor, a deliberate provocation (blockade of Japan’s energy supplies, combined with other things such as statements insulting the emperor IIRC which would require Japan to defend their honor, and setting up the “target” well in advance). The purpose of provoking the Japanese attack was to convince the US populace to agree to enter WW2. IIRC the reason that was so desirable to TPTB was economic.
A close family member knew about the coming attack weeks in advance–a tenant who was a journalist received a telegram posting them to leave immediately for Hawaii to cover the upcoming attack. The tenant showed the telegram to my family member, who never forget it.
The Pearl Harbor attack–both US provocation and US foreknowledge of the specifics–has been documented by numerous historians.
Nuclear Regulators’ Flawed Analysis Leaves Millions at Risk From Radioactive Fires
The headline is typically alarmist, but the article does a fairly balanced job of pointing out the kind of risks that come from standard operating practice in regulation of the US nuclear industry. As many will know, one of the biggest public threats after the Fukushima reactor meltdowns and explosions was a spent fuel pool that was in danger of drying up or collapsing. This would have lead to a hugely radioactive fire that could have displaced 25% of Japan’s population and forced evacuation of Tokyo. The practice of putting as many spent fuel rods as possible into the same pool, and leaving them there for many years, is common in the US. It also greatly increases the risk and intensity of any radiation release from such a fire.
Now it seems the regulators take a very economic view of this situation. From the piece:
The NRC adopted a number of safety upgrades after the Fukushima disaster but rejected a measure to end dense packing of the 90 spent fuel pools located at nuclear plants across the US – a technique utilities use to reduce storage costs. […] Under the NRC’s current rules (which the authors point out are self-imposed), the potential backfit for the storage problem — moving the spent fuel from the pools to air-cooled dry storage casks after a few years — could be adopted only if 1) the monetary value of the resulting public risk reduction were to exceed the cost of implementation and 2) the increase in safety were “substantial.” The estimated cost of transferring the spent fuel to dry cask storage is $5 billion, about $50 million for each of the nation’s 100 reactors.
Point 2) is reasonable, but 1) raises the question “What is the monetary value of the resulting public risk reduction?” How does one quantify the cost of deaths, displacement and suffering? Perhaps some of the economists here can comment on standard approaches to this. To continue:
The NRC’s analysis assumed the chance of a fire resulting in a large release of radioactive pollution would be small, though with considerable uncertainty. Its risk analysis also failed to account for a possible terrorist attack and made other assumptions that minimized the estimated health and economic consequences of a high-density fuel pool fire.
For example, it ignored accident consequences beyond 50 miles and assumed radiation dose standards for population relocation that were less restrictive than those recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency. In addition, the NRC overlooked the societal risks of accidents such as the psychological trauma of mass relocation.
Forget psychological trauma, in Japan there were more than 1500 deaths directly attributed to the forced relocations – mostly old people who died in temporary shelters after being uprooted, as well as heart attacks, accidents, and suicide victims. Yet in determining whether the benefit from risk reduction is justified, the NRC essentially ignores these aspects.
Under the current administration, protection of public health and the environment is a non-priority. The $5B costs of moving to dry cask storage is another hidden cost of nuclear energy that nuclear advocates want to keep hidden. Perhaps some tech billionaire will get concerned about this, as fallout doesn’t discriminate, otherwise nothing is likely to change. Indeed, it will probably be “fixed” by raising the EPA acceptable radiation dose standards to validate the NRC’s approach.
The EPA estimates the “statistical value of a human life” at $7.4 million dollars in 2006 dollars (per https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/mortality-risk-valuation), which effectively serves as their cut-off number on whether or not environmental regulations are worth the cost. If regulatory costs exceed this number per life saved, then the increase in poverty caused by the compliance costs is presumed to do more harm that the cleaned-up environment would help.
If you buy into this thinking, a cost of $5 billion could only be justified if it would save 676 lives. Given that Fukushima killed 1500 people and Chernobyl even more, it seems pretty easy to justify the effort even with this rather cold-hearted math.
Don’t blame the nuclear power people, though. Between 1983 and 2014, nuclear power operators paid nearly $31 billion to the federal government through the “Nuclear Waste Fund Fee” (https://www.eenews.net/stories/1059999730), which was supposed to be used for a permanent repository to hold their nuclear waste. The government never lived up to its obligation (the Obama administration killed funding for Yucca Mountain in 2009) and kept the waste fund fees anyway.
Was that based on junk science for the EPA to arrive at the $7.4 million per human life?
How much for a cat then?
It’s not like EPA’s credibility is not under attack already.
Isn’t the solution to that problem not math, not a simple formula with a ‘derived’ constant of dollars per human life or cat life?
“This American hostage, how much should we pay our GI Joe soldiers to get her out? Oops, sorry, we have just gone over the limit. Time to go home.”
Like that?
A cat life is obviously worth about $ 20 MM.
What is the value of the life of someone in the top 1 percent?
I believe that is called an “imaginary number.”
Square root of 2 plus 20 over -1
I hope Theresa May will seek the advice of Hillary Clinton on how to handle this loss with dignity.
Laughing my *** off!!
deadest ever pan. Applause.
it is a club, and we are not in it:
Biden encourages 2012 foe Romney to run for the Senate
During a closed-door appearance with Romney here on Friday evening, Biden said Romney should consider a Senate bid. The remark came during the second day of the E2 Summit, an annual Romney-hosted donor conference. Attendees were gathered to hear a dialogue between the two men, who were on opposite sides of the 2012 election.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/09/joe-biden-mitt-romney-senate-donor-conference-hillary-clinton-239383
For sure we are not in it and I for what nothing to do with their club.
You forget that Romney signed off on “Obamacare” in Massachusetts before Obama did. I am sure Romney, Biden, and Obama alll agree on more than they disagree on.
maybe i missed it, but didn’t see anything in NC on the 50th anniversary of the Israeli attack on USS Liberty.
Didn’t see anything anywhere else either, especially in NYT, WaPo, WSJ et al.
wonder why?
In fact saw only this, today: https://theintercept.com/2017/06/06/fifty-years-later-nsa-keeps-details-of-israels-uss-liberty-attack-secret/
which didn’t make a particularly favourable impression, however some of the links within the comments section are worth a peek
See Philip Giraldi here for some disturbing details, some of which dovetail with the false flag story in the links.
http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/remembering-the-u-s-s-liberty-2/
Here is another one if it not in comments.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/02/infamy-at-sea-israels-attack-on-the-uss-liberty-50-years-later/
I sent the above to a local paper writer who interviewed a local survivor, it was very interesting do to he was the radio operator at the time. He didn’t have nice word for the us navy or israel and why should he.
One of my friends is a Navy veteran who served with people who had been on the Liberty when it was attacked. Let’s just say that my friend is not a fan of Israel.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/02/infamy-at-sea-israels-attack-on-the-uss-liberty-50-years-later/
Here’s an extensive account by Cockburn/St. Clair taken from one of their books. It ran on Counterpunch a week ago. There’s a Mondoweiss-Finkelstein interview that was linked here in comments that also talked about it and other issues.
50 years after pearl harbor, Rockefeller center was owned by japanese…are we a forgiving, stupid or captured people…the danger with allowing a munchkin country to take unresponded to pot shots at americans is it encourages others and increases costs and risk along with hesitation on the part of our military personnel to be “all in”…
Counterpunch had two articles about the USS Liberty, one from someone who was there.
Forget the Trump rally, another powerful trade is ‘overwhelming everything’: El-Erian
Sorry, but this is incorrect. What’s really overwhelming everything is not corporate buybacks and rich individuals buying stocks, but Central Banks buying assets:
Today BofA’s Michael Hartnett provides an update on this number: he writes that central bank balance sheets have now grown to a record $15.1 trillion, up from $14.6 trillion in late April, and says that “central banks have bought a record $1.5 trillion in assets YTD.”
That’s at the end of April, which works out to a run rate of almost $400 billion per month or $4.8 trillion projected for 2017. It is important to note that this kind of market buying activity has never happened before, except during the financial crisis, yet we told there is no crisis today and everything is fine. Today’s “policy” completely insulates the markets from price discovery since these central banks will never sell their assets. It is also the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind as central banks buy these assets from already wealthy individuals and corporations while driving prices higher. No wonder El-Erain doesn’t want to mention it.
The financial community, of which El-Erian is a big part of, also continues to avoid any mention of this phenomena. Besides making their job of reading and predicting the market obsolete, this policy is destroying the pubic wealth of nations around the globe in a last gasp orgy of profiteering. No wonder it’s not discussed.
This policy is now hard-wired into the system. Talk of tapering is a joke occasionally whispered to maintain a shred of credibility. The Big Questions are can it end, will it end, why will it end and when will it end and what does it look like on the other side of the final trade?
Do those wealth entities get wealth by selling, with the central banks buying, their best assets?
Or do they only sell junk?
“Driving prices higher” – those wealth entities would have to pay higher, after selling, due to ‘prices being driven higher,’ if they have to buy again (like a working class worker would after selling his/her only home…but these wealthy entities are not working class workers owing only one asset).
Unless, it’s the stuff they don’t want, or stuff they borrow on short term loans they have to pay off…while still keeping their valuable assets.
In the meanwhile, due to the ‘greatest transfer of wealth,’ those with homes keep up or even race ahead, while those without, typically the young (unless they will inherit their parents’ homes, up to the allowed limit) fall further behind.
Unlike homes, stocks and bonds are created out of thin air and supposedly represent a store of value in an asset or a loan. Central Banks are using money created out of thin air to buy theses financial facsimiles. The real value of the underlying collateral is always in question.
Yesterday the Five Horsemen of the Techpocalyse — the galloping poster children of Bubble III — hit an air pocket, setting off AH-OO-GAH horns on trading floors around the planet.
Let’s call it Jeremy Grantham’s revenge: at long last, value stocks — those beaten-down, mangy curs — had their day in the sun, which we can hardly begrudge them.
When the going gets tough, the tough make new indexes. As background, here is the IPO birth order of the fabulous five:
All five hail from one of the two great Tech Lord metropoli: NoCal and Seattle. So we form cap-weighted geographic subindexes: NoCal (46.0% Apple; 33.3% Alphabet; 20.6% Facebook) and Seattle (58.2% Microsoft; 41.8% Amazon). Here is their chart:
Until yesterday’s donnybrook, Seattle led NoCal on all but three days since we started tracking the Five Horsemen on Apr 26th. But Seattle closed on June 9th at 0.3% below NoCal. Will Space Needle City punch back? Stay tuned, comrades … to As the Tech Turns.
There were a couple of pieces at GlobalResearch: Remembering the U.S.S. Liberty and 50th Anniversary of Israel’s Infamous USS Liberty Attack. Al Jazeera has a documentary on it called “The Day that Israel attacked the US”.
It was also noted in the Allentown Morning Call, the Modesto Bee and the Casper Star-Tribune.
Apart from a few vets and pinkos, there are few in the US who want this treachery to be remembered. Something I read recently suggested that a Russian ship actually came to the aid of the stricken ship.
True but the Liberty ask them to stay away.
I have a counterpunch link above.
Russian or Soviet?
The latter is no longer a threat, but the former very much is….I read it somewhere, as recently as this week.
Stay away from anyone who might know someone who has had any contact with someone who might have Russian ties.
Former
Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill: unelected advisers who ‘acted more like DPMs’
The resignations of Theresa May’s combative former chiefs of staff will be welcomed by many Tory colleagues
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/10/nick-timothy-and-fiona-hill-unelected-advisers-who-acted-more-like-dpms
Re: Self-navigating cargo ships…
Pirates will enjoy? What about the deeper-pocketed drug smugglers?
They already have submarines…
There is huge scope here for the new government to be attacked over this by Labour. Over the years I’ve noted how the entire UK media do its best not to report anything about Northern Ireland, unless it involves the IRA. Theresa May of course made a big deal of Corbyn’s supposed IRA connections. But now she is sharing government with a party full of creationists and climate deniers and homophobes, the leader of which in just the last month had meetings with the UDA, an organisation listed as a terrorist in British law. But I’m pretty sure that if you asked the average person on the street in England or Wales (possibly not in Scotland), who Arlene Foster is, and what the DUP is, and you’d either get a blank look or a casual description of them being Irish politicians.
But I strongly suspect that the general omertà in the UK media about reporting NI accurately will apply. And of course they will continue the unspoken rule that only nationalists and catholics can be terrorists, unionists/loyalists may be ‘thugs’, but they are never terrorists, no matter how many they kill (and unlike the IRA, they are still regularly killing people in their internal feuds). So they can conveniently overlook the association of the DUP with sectarian killers.
The Brexit aspect is also quite interesting – the DUP have a very different perspective on Brexit, primarily because many of their supporters know they will be hit very hard by a closed Irish border. This will add yet another layer of complexity.
The Conservatives (and their media) have probably not gotten their heads fully around this, but they have found themselves in bed with some very unpleasant partners. No doubt they will patronise them at first, but they may well find that the DUP have some nasty surprises.
I’m from NI and you are completely wrong about the media, esp broadcast media, calling loyalists thugs but republicans terrorists. I include the national UK broadcasters as well as BBC NI, UTV etc. The DUP’s association with loyalists is exactly this: they set up Ulster Resistance, then quit it. Perhaps after they had acquired their guns, which other loyalists then used. Foster meeting a UDA man isn’t support for loyalist violence any more than JC meeting Adams and McGuinness in the wake of 2 killings in 2015 is support for those. May is a hypocrite over terorrism; the DUP do not support terrorism. Both these things are true at the same time.
For “regularly kill” let us consult an academic source. Republican terrorists have killed about 27 people since 2002, and loyalist terrorists have killed about 34 since then. Davison and McGuigan are believed to have been killed by IRA men acting without authority of the leadership.
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/violence/deathsfrom2002draft.htm
Re: Theresa May
Dear “Dis. May”
They want you to go away…
>>>Class Resentment and the Center-Left, or the Politics of “We Are the 80%” Peter Dorman. Important.
“I suspect most people upset with inequality tend to blame the class directly above them, the one they interact with most. ” It’s nice that he suspects that. I’m not so sure. ISTM “Divide and Conquer” gets its power from lateral violence. I suspect they tend to blame the people ahead of them in line. And anybody who’s ever worked in a shift-based workplace knows, the worst people in the world are on the shift preceding yours.
Sure, the boss is to blame for the whole set up. And familiarity does breed contempt. Also breeds Stockholm Syndrome.
In the real world, workers depend greatly on the whims of the people immediately above us. Real workers know that it’s dangerous to be too accurate with one’s complaints. When the owner says, there’s just no money in the budget for a raise, I can say, “At the level of extraction you’ve set. How’s that little James Bond Beemer running these days? I hope you’re well rested after your 2-week out-of-state vacation at your private waterfront cabin. I was going to rent a cabin in a state park for 2 nights. But now I need a root canal instead.” Or I can keep my job.
What happens is, we hear the boss complaining, and we take up those complaints as ours. We cut our own throats to show our loyalty: always saving ever more time, working off the clock, taking work home, putting our needs last, etc. And we hate on the ones we’re directly in competition with.
“The problem, you see, is all these stupid lazy people with no Work Ethic (genuflects). And those bleeding heart liberals who want free stuff. And the stupid politicians always making more useless hoops to jump through. Rich people have the stuff, they take the vacations, they own the biggest houses and the best cars and so on. You know, the Bigbux were in the other night and dropped 5 hun like it was nuthin’. They must be doing something right.”
Play me out, Roy!
Well the boss man’s daughter sneaks me water
Every time her daddy’s down the line
She says meet me tonight love a me right
And everything is gonna be fine
So I slave all day without much pay
And I’m just biding my time
‘Cause the company and the daughter, you see
They’re both gonna be all mine
Yah I’m gonna be the man, I’m gonna be The Man
Gotta make him a hand if I’m gonna be The Man
Working for the man, working for The Man
I gotta make him a hand
Working for The Man
— Roy Orbison, Working For The Man
Bonus quote: note that it’s your brother, not your brother’s boss:
And when you gonna get some food (shoobe, doowa)
Your brother got to be your enemy, well…
— Bob Marley and The Wailers, Ambush In The Night
Good call. I thought the Dorman piece was excellent insofar as it disputed the stale nonsense spouted in the haute MSM, but it did a better job of describing class relations in America’s dynamic ‘coastal’ regions than in flyover.
Where I live, and where my extended family lives, owners of tire repair shops and retired fire department managers* loudly crap all over public school teachers for “getting paid to work only 9 months a year”…….. despite being the ones with more money, more stuff and more power. It’s barely even lateral violence with these pot-bellied, well-to-do heels, it’s pure down-punching.
*(and their stunningly vicious wives)
Interesting, when I read the piece I thought he left out kicking down at the quintile below. I’ve heard more than a few people complaining about observing people with food stamps buying steak or lobster or something pricey waiting in line at the grocery store. Or expressing resentment about people they perceive to be UI habitue.
I think people assume too much.
This was also nicely described in It’s Not Gonna Be Okay: the Nauseating Nothingness of Neoliberal Capitalist and Professional Class Politics by Counterpunch’s Paul Street, which appeared in Links a couple weeks back.
Thanks all, glad you liked it.
Beautiful swans!
And so begins the list of things warned about and that would require viligence to combat
1) Lots of dicussion about personalities
2)And:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/10/chris-leslie-labour-should-have-won-against-theresa-may-open-goal
Also too, the next sentence is, “If so, consider a rough four-class model of the US.” I really like the idea of using this pattern to understand the US. First came across it, of course, in comparative mythology. A fourfold division of society is very, very ancient.
India’s caste system, I suspect, isn’t unique to India, and goes all the way back into our deepest past. It, and the evidence from primatology, is the reason I seriously doubt the “and then farming came along and with it specialization and inequality” hypothesis, as well as the “Capitalism did it” explanation of class.
In Attenbourough’s recent Planet Earth doc, there’s a scene in which an adolecent upper class female monkey (Hanuman’s langur maybe, don’t think it was a macaque) literally takes food right from out of the mouth of an adult lower class female. The old gal clenches her teeth and tightens her cheeks, but makes no other effort to resist. Just horrifying to think of the analogies.
Class violence is as old as we are. And the “why” of it is, too: It’s the dominance. It’s all about the dominance.
“Class violence is as old as we are.”
And how old are “we”? And who are “we”?
Or are you just insisting everyone (of whatever kind and time) is “we”? Then, OK ” It’s the dominance. It’s all about the dominance.”
You’re right to be skeptical. How should you know what I mean by “we”? You could assume I”m human, and talking about humans and our ancestry, going all the way back to the earliest mammals, if not before (life in the Pre-Cambrian ocean, eg, was no picnic). But that would be dangerous. Or normal, take your pick.
I mean, for all you know, I could be a squirrel, shaking my tiny fist at Big Nuts.
Let’s put it on every coin, in the name of the rectification of names: Dominentur ob dominatum .
No gentle British media challenging Corbyn’s ‘illegitimate’ win, and pushing faked news, leaked by British intelligence, about help from ex-USSR Russians?
“Facts”
“Proving”
And in contrast to America, if you didn’t get the job done for the party, you will be challenged by other party leaders.
Ahhh but we will see if this lasts until 2022 or whenever the next election is! Here’s some American journal pushing the “soft on Russia” thing. https://twitter.com/CarlBeijer/status/873512261305987073
Doctors scamming
In Canada, we’ve got our own healthcare woes:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/investigations/doctors-extra-billing-private-clinics-investigation/article35260558/
Yeah legal action needs to be taken
UK
Young people were called snowflakes, Trotskyists and fools during this campaign. Now we’ve bitten back
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/general-election-results-exit-poll-young-people-voters-labour-snowflakes-bit-back-a7780471.html
The NYT Throws a Hissy Fit
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/opinion/the-year-of-voting-recklessly.html
Yep here’s their true colors, a neoliberal Pravda machine.
Funny
https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/873175410803998720
It’s pretty clear elite Dems hate the “Bernie woulda won” meme because they know that, well…Bernie woulda won.
– David Sirota
The Sirota Twitter thread is far from funny if you read down through the comments. The web generally, and Twitter specifically, is still thronged with aggressive establishment Democratic Party poseurs. They police social media venues on behalf of the current Party elite. They are very authoritative in their dismissals of “Berniebros” despite the unparalleled failure of last November. Or more accurately, because of it. Multi-pronged propaganda efforts are all they have to retain some bleak, weak hold on prestige and (thereby) funding streams.
I can see why they’re all over the social media with snappy comebacks about how any mention of Sanders’s potential = “rewriting history”. They don’t want us rewriting the future.
It’s not the destination – Bernie would have won – based on how they are acting now (“They are very authoritative in their dismissals of “Berniebros” despite the unparalleled failure of last November.”), they would have been even more authoritative, ‘to retain some bleak, weak hold on prestige and (thereby) funding streams.’
Thus, it’s a journey…whether he would have won or not. The struggle is still on.
Dwelling on the past (he would have won) is not rewriting history. Focusing on the present struggle, on the journey, is more productive.
I am looking forward to their reaction to Sessions finally appointing a special prosecutor into the Hellary email breach of USA security. Won’t they wail and shriek then. That’s the only way Trump will get the BS demons off his back and focus on what makes america great: life without the Clintons and their foundation.
I had a feeling young people would come through in the UK election. The conservative establishment cannot in the future rely on the expectation that the young will talk a big game but in the end will not vote.
“Voting Recklessly” That’s the kind of document that will be in the high school text books after the deluge. Gets completely to the point in two words. And probably misses it; it’s Saturday, I’m not up to reading the NYT.
Used to subscribe to the times. Now consider them scumbags.
Re David Sirota’s tweet, also an insightful interview of US and UK political strategist Arnie Graf by Sirota up at IBT pertaining to the British election, and what parallels we might draw to what occurred in the US:
▪ The UK election was a reaction against continued Conservative austerity and financial repression of voters who recognize the sham and for whose benefit it works.
▪ The UK election was a reaction not only against austerity policies, but an increasingly insulated Thatcherite-Blairite clique who disdain the white working class and ignore their interests.
▪ Theresa May did not meaningfully interact with white working class voters. Corbyn did, and his message resonated with voters.
▪ UK general elections differ from the US in that money to politicians for election is legally limited in the UK, particularly during the final weeks before the election. Further, many Labour MPs ran on the issue of the damage that Conservative austerity policies were causing voters in their particular district, not on Jeremy Corbyn.
http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/obama-mentor-who-helped-labour-party-says-uk-election-has-lessons-democrats
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/08/comey-and-mueller-russiagates-mythical-heroes/
My apologies if this appeared here already and I missed it. Explains how Comey/Mueller are a police state tag team for the establishment that dates way back to 9/11–from a very credible source.
If Comey leaked with the intention of bringing about an independent Russian investigation, was the cause, the origin, the justification tainted?
Seeing people on twitter drawing attention to the Good Friday agreement. Seems like a tory/DUP official coalition may not be legal as per agreement as UK government has to be a neutral party.
So far I haven’t been able to find if it’s a legal requirement or not but at the least this needs to be negotiated before we can have a government to negotiate brexit!!
The Tories are forming a coalition with a party backed by terrorists
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/dup-conservatives-northern-ireland-coalition-ulster-defence-association-paramilitaries-peace-process-a7782631.html
May sends her chief whip to Belfast to hammer out a full-blown COALITION with Ian Paisley’s party despite claims a deal with the DUP risks ’20 years of work’ on Northern Ireland peace
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4591070/Fears-devolution-Northern-Ireland-DUP-deal.html
Ezra Klein’s interviewing style, to judge from the Masha Gessen example, is to blab for five minutes on a topic and finally conclude with no real question. Except perhaps, “Don’t you agree?” Gessen was too polite to embarrass him by saying, “Yes,” and clamming up, which she could have done three or four times. Nonetheless, she managed to drive several thoughtful points through the host interference.
Yves,
The link to “George Osborne savages Theresa May…” story is malformed, it should be:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/09/george-osborne-savages-theresa-may-four-editions-evening-standard/
I’m a little confused about one thing regarding the UK election. Supposedly, one reason was rejection of May’s hard Brexit stance. OTOH, Corbyn was successful campaigning on progressive issues. But as I understand it, one of the biggest issues boiling up among the common populace is the influx of immigrants who are depressing wages. So how does Corbyn propose to navigate (or even cancel) Brexit but still either a) limit the influx of immigrants or b) improve the economic status of the great masses? Or am I misunderstanding something about Corbyn’s plans?
You’ll see even more campaigning in Europe, because there will be even more elections.
This ties up energy into electoral processes slow to reform.
Thus, the “problem” becomes the voters and it puts off reforms. I’m beginning to see that gridlock works both ways, intentionally or not.
(awaiting moderation)
Because the “anti-immigration” crowd isn’t necessarily anti-immigration. They are looking for solutions to their problems or for government to try to not be so heinous.
Believe it or not the “deplorables” aren’t necessarily racist. Its traditionally called scapegoating and tends to work when a better alternative is not offered. “Make America Great” versus “I’m with her.”
At some point, voters will pick a candidate they think will offer solutions or not vote for a lesser of two evils candidate at a sufficient rate for the “lesser evil” candidate to win. Political messaging isn’t hard. Its only difficult for a conservative party in center left drag.
If they want 2 million immigrants, and you think 1 million is more feasible, you’re anti-immigration.
“No negotiation. Take it or leave it.”
“I saw you at a Russian restaurant. How can you be against more Russian immigrants?”
Well, that doesn’t work as well as this:
“I saw you at a Russian doctor’s office. How can you be against more Russian immigrants?”
It’s as if some jobs are more than just jobs. The insurance company says you are responsible for the co-pay part of your visit.
Some prefer to think the doctor just saved your (priceless) life…a debt never discharged, I guess.
But that Borscht soup you got, you paid for it. You don’t own the chef anything.
Looks like I phrased my question wrong. How does Corbyn engineer a “soft” Brexit, retaining the economic treaty benefits but getting loose of the immigration/free flow of labor aspects of the EU? Or, if he abandons Brexit, and gets the majority of the country to agree, how does he solve the free flow of labor issue? Because it seems to me like trying to turn around from the neoliberal order and restoring domestically beneficial economic policies is going to be hard enough without having a constant influx of immigrants adding to the labor/welfare/social services pool.
Why would it be Corbyn/Labour that “engineers” a soft Brexit, rather than pressures, including Tories, opposed to May’s hard Brexit? Brexit is now May’s mess to deal with, and she has chosen that fate by not resigning.
She has lost her mandate for a hard Brexit, and is now outnumbered by the forces that want to remain in the single market, which include the DUP on whom she relies. She can’t simply ram a hard Brexit deal through parliament, though she may try to sabotage a deal with the EU. But if she doesn’t compromise on Brexit, she will destroy the Tories.
thanks, NTG, believe it or not that’s actually a much more concise way of saying a lot of what I meant below. Where we may — or may not? — disagree is that I think all selective immigration control is racist in practice, and that practical racism is much more important than personal sentiments. A faultline cynically manipulated by the “conservatives in center left drag” who implement an onslaught of practically racist policy while vilifying a lot of people who are “looking for solutions” for an imputed racism that’s actually their (i.e. the center left conservatives'”) own. The shorthand for this phenomenon is “David Goodhart”, the “Center left” think tanker who denies the importance of “looking for solutions” — because working class people are only capable of “tribal” sentiment, he imagines — and is now effectively puppeteer-in-chief of White Identity Politics.
I don’t think he sees a problem, because apparently he’s aware that:
1. we “immigrants” are part of “the great masses”.
2. among the people actually responsible for depressing wages, there are indeed a few immigrants (Boris Johnson, Mark Carney, Lakshmi Mittal, Xavier Rolet…), but most are either “homegrown” makers of state and corporate policy (legislators, “non-political” administrators, CEOs, consultants, academics middle managers, gangmasters…) or are “settled” far away and exercise their influence from other continents (“foreign” legislators, “non-political” administrators, CEOs, consultants, academics…).
3. fear of “cultural” contamination (i.e., more succinctly, racism) is a big deal among the the proprietors of those parts of England (specifically) that immigrants never even visit (because: why would we? And: do you think we would be made welcome?), but those creatures are not exactly Corbyn’s target demographic. Separately, a lot of working and outright impoverished people also in low-immigration areas do indeed suspect that immigration, rather than the global division of labour and its vicious application in UK policy since c.1978, is the direct cause of the ruin of their lives. And unlike the Milibands, Blunketts and Straws of the world who encourage this misconception while insulting those who hold it, Corbyn and the low-powered, pillow-soft left milieu he comes from have enough common respect for “ordinary” people to disagree with them face-to-face about the causes while agreeing about the effects.
4. Meanwhile, in high-immigration areas (note: NOT those plantations or building sites to which a gangmaster may briefly ship a load of semi-indentured workers) — eg. London apart from a few rich semi-urban outposts of the “Home Counties” and/or UAE, plus much of Bristol, Cardiff, Liverpool, Leicester, Manchester, Glasgow — millions of cosmopolitan, metropolitan workers are way too pragmatic to mistake their/our neighbours for the source of our problems: there’s too much obvious evidence of where the problems really come from (landlords, government, councils, employers, private utilities, police…), along with the evidence that the problems are exactly the same for neighbours of different “national” origin. None of which implies some paradise of non-racism in those cities, far from it; but the shared everyday life of the “mixed” (if you presuppose that “nationality” is real) urban proletariat has done infinitely more to undermine racist presumption and tradition than several decades of virtuous posturing and scolding by the same upper-middle-class anglo-English elites who straight-facedly try to instruct their inferiors in”anti-racism” and “British Values” at the same time.
5. Metro-proletarian workers (by which I do mean all degrees of desperation, not just odd hybrids of desperation, haphazard under/over-employment and over-self-education like me and my immediate friends) also tend pragmatically to see that if our wages/conditions/forlorn hopes of housing are “depressed” by “competition”, the problem is likely to be competition as such rather than the legal nationality of the unwilling competitors. Being surrounded by people from all over the world, we even often remember that “they” might just as easily “take our jobs away” without ever leaving their “home” countries! Nor does an abstract head count of population usually seem a greater threat than the HR manager, the dole office inquisitor or the bailiff at the door. That’s why we don’t, under normal circumstances, protest outside maternity hospitals or celebrate at funerals.
The bonus antidote of the adorable Momma chicken setting on the adorable puppy made my heart swoon.
I can now forget all the bad things in the news.
Thank you.
-Class Resentment and the Center-Left, or the Politics of “We Are the 80%”
Almost the same idea as the Archdruid talked about in January of last year!
“It so happens that you can determine a huge amount about the economic and social prospects of people in America today by asking one remarkably simple question: how do they get most of their income? Broadly speaking—there are exceptions, which I’ll get to in a moment—it’s from one of four sources: returns on investment, a monthly salary, an hourly wage, or a government welfare check. People who get most of their income from one of those four things have a great many interests in common, so much so that it’s meaningful to speak of the American people as divided into an investment class, a salary class, a wage class, and a welfare class”
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.ca/2016/01/donald-trump-and-politics-of-resentment.html
He elesewhere breaks it down to something like 30% welfare, 50% wage, 20% salary and <1% investment. AKA 'We are the 80%'.
Will it be the Stockholm Syndrome, or No Taxation without Representation? “Give me liberty!”
Ah, summer vacation – time for the kids to be kids, including of course summer camp! Structured fun with their peers and not under the watchful eyes of their parents. Hiking, learning to make a campfire, pitch a tent, paddle a canoe, maybe catch a fish, learn about the local flora and fauna, and sleep under the stars. OK, well, maybe somewhere not near Silicon Valley. Flyer in my mailbox from STEM4Kids Summer Camps in my mailbox today. Here are the various kinds of summer camps these folks offer:
[1] Java Programming Camp, ages 11-16
[2] Python Programming Camp, ages 9-16
[3] C++ Programming Camp, ages 11-16
[4] STEAM Well-Balanced Camp [subtitle: “Art. Science. Progress.”], ages 6-12
[5] Creative Robotics & Invention, ages 6-8
[6] Mechanical Engineer & Entrepreneurship, ages 7-11
[7] Robotics Geeks EV3 & Entrepreneurship, ages 9-14
[8] Math & English Enrichment (Featuring COMMON CORE), ages 6-11
[9] Taste of Programming & Invention, ages 6-9
[10] Programming Geeks & Invention, ages 9-12
[11] Bollywood & Invention, ages 6-9
Got to get the kiddies an early start at being well-trained little cubicle rats! To turn the startup-stereotype on its head, I wonder if parents can pay the admission fees for these ($199/wk half-days, $299/wk full-day) in “shares” rather than cash? Somehow I doubt it.
Of the above, only one is accompanied by a photo of kids looking like they’re having fun – the “Bollywood & Invention” one (Local ethnic mix is ~1/3 Indian). “Creative Robotics & Invention” shows the hands of some kids who might be having fun, but the rest mostly display corporate-style logos for Java Python, C++, etc. [9] and [10] show complex-looking color-coded flowcharts.
And, no “Venture Capital, IP Theft & Swimming With Sharks” camp? This is an outrageous omission!
Can they start younger than 6?
Well I went to computer camp in my teens up until I was too old to go anymore and I had a great time. But they didn’t accept anyone younger than 10 or 11, and even then, kids of that age rarely even showed up. It was mostly 12 and above (and almost entirely boys. There would be MAYBE 3 girls in a given week compared to the dozens of boys)
Robotics and programming course for 6-9? That’s probably a waste of money, theyre too young to learn that much. More traditional summer activities would probably be a better learning experience for that age group. Focusing on making friends, doing arts and crafts and being physically active seems like a much healthier alternative for that age group than having them glued to computer screens for several hours trying to learn code.
Glad they managed to work in the word, “Geek” in there. That’s a sure hook!
They weren’t that balanced in the course offerings, however.
How about “Learn to spell broccoli, and pick it for extra money!” – Course taught in Indian.
“Making Guacamole – not just a low paying career!”
“How to work in Bangalore and evade child labor laws for your next summer vacation!”
Odds-making for aspiring card sharks – Featuring Arduino Wearable Fashion Accessories For Junior Bankers.”
“How to cheat on your SAT and get into Stanford.”
“How to lie on your application for a student loan – AND get the parents or grandparents to co-sign!”
“How to obtain Stanford Finals test questions and answers!”
“Use your JScript toolkit to build an adult dating website with mobile surveillance!”
“Modify a cheap Chinese bicycle to be “Green” and self-driving – and free up the rider to be elsewhere!”
That’s a head start.
what a list!
I’d add “False Flag techniques: how to survive parents and older siblings”
Feral voter here.
Just got an email from an outfit called Take the State. It seeks to toss all of those evil Republicans out of office, especially in states like AZ.
What do they propose instead? Well, if you guessed “Elect Democrats!” you are right.
I unsubscribed from their list and deleted the email.
“Drink Pepsi instead of Coke, its better for you!”
Peter Sallis: Wallace and Gromit actor dies aged 96 – BBC News
And I see Adam West of the classic cheesy 60s Batman series has also died at the ripe old age of 88. MeTV will surely run a special tribute over the weekend, in addition to of course running their regular reruns of said series.
Batman was hardly cheesy, it had great direction, production design, sumptious colour, wonderful guest actors and some of the best scripts ever written, courtesy lorenzo semple jr.
Check out ‘hizzoner the penguin’ if you doubt me.
Perhaps ‘campy’ would have been a better word choice – those wacky set designs, wild colors, hilarious signage, and of course the floridly dastardly supervillains (of whom my personal favorite is Victor Buono’s King Tut).
I’d vote for Eartha Kitt’s incomparable Catwoman.
I’m convinced Meredith Burgess has been drinking boy blood for decades and really is The Penguin, and Lloyd Blankfein.
The first season is out of this world funny.
Our world is defined by the people, things and events we know in our lives.
When some pass on, a little bit of the world diminishes.
And you get to be really old, and very few people you know still live, and your way of life when you grew up no longer exists, perhaps to get in touch with another person is completely different (if it is better, that one thing; but if it’s crappified, that’s another), you are less incentivized to hang on.
WNYC reporters’ discussion of Christopher Wray’s involvement as Christie’s personal attorney concerning Bridgegate.
Wray was Christie’s “secret” attorney who had his own secret during the investigation, as in hiding Christie’s phone.
Wray held on to Christie’s phone, which had records of text messages during some the crucial hours of Bridgegate, until after a judge ruled that the phone did not need to be turned over to prosecutors or defense attorneys for those actually charged with crimes of Bridgegate.
And this is who will run the FBI?
Now, I don’t know whether it’s legal for an atty to withhold evidence, but it sure seems unethical to me. But I’m not part of the Jersey Gangs.
However, it seems to be something done by the “best” of the higher officials at DOJ and the FBI. So that may mean Wray does have “impeccable credentials.”
Other interesting sides to Christie’s ethics and appointments discussed.
http://www.wnyc.org/story/week-politics-christies-bridgegate-lawyer-trumps-pick
Audio, so far — not sure transcript will be available.
Was that more on the judge or on Wray?
Money, money everywhere; not a dollop to be had.
Wall of liquidity???
For whom? Money, money, everywhere…
Chinese money and Fed money, in a planet sized nutshell.
There’s also that outer space star that’s been talking to us lately – In Binary: Zero Down! 1%, 100 Earth orbits (check def of (or bits)? You are automatically unqualified! (sic)
Irish Times DUP(?$aud?) Dirty brexit campaign money…holy (family blog) (family blog) batgyrl…
How is this not front page ap/reuters around the world on monday morning if “T-rexxx” May does not resign 2morrow ???
Damn…I feel dirty…went back into some old dusty files on the troubles since a name or two in DUP seemed to trigger something…”t-rexxx may” is out of her mind…she will be gone by tuesday…I mean I feel really dirty…as in almost might need to apologize to dick cheney dirty…dead trees can tell tall tales…but armscor paris april 21, 1989…
ah yes…I remember it well
And thus, a confidence and supply arrangement is agreed in the UK. It’s notable, however, that even then, it takes just a few Tory rebels to upset the apple cart. I don’t know how TM will get anything done. How strong and stable her government looks!
Good and scary overview of agriculture
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2017/06/10/opinion/021a1eco
6 (soon 3 if the mergers go through) companies are controlling 60% of the world’s seeds and 70% of agrotoxins.
4 companies are controlling 54% of the equipment market
Where have the anti-monopoly and competition authorities been?
Eating tofu and hydroponic bean sprouts.
Why is a basic Chinese staple seen in some quarters as some kind of elite affectation? Have these people never had pock-marked old lady tofu?
Definitely not for the efete pate, as it can carry a deadly germ or virus, I forgot which, that will permanently wipe out your liver function. A few decades ago, when sanitation was not well understood with regard to tofu making, part of a Chinese village was lost before they figured out what the problem was with their equipment.
Before then, Japan went thru a learning experience post war, when apparently, traditional word of mouth knowledge was lost.
Today, there can be the same problem with active probiotic cultured milk products. That makes me a tad nervous.
Then you can have salmonella or E Coli on your bean sprouts. It’s not safe to put anything in your mouth!
Breaking: ISIL’s Baghdadi killed in Raqqa: Syrian State TV
UNVERIFIED reports from Syria claim that the leader of Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in an air strike in Raqqa. His death has been reported many times before.