What happened next? Was the punk turtle that breathes through its genitals saved from extinction? Guardian
Wiping the slate clean: is it time to reconsider debt forgiveness? FT. Gillian Tett reviews Michael Hudson’s new book.
1MDB dragnet closes in on Najib, Goldman Sachs Asia Times
Washington Gov. Proposes ‘Herculean Effort’ to Save 74 Remaining Southern Resident Orcas EcoWatch (Glenn F)
How McKinsey Has Helped Raise the Stature of Authoritarian Governments NYT
Waste Watch
Legal plastic content in animal feed could harm human health, experts warn Guardian
Egypt tomb: Saqqara ‘one of a kind’ discovery revealed BBC
‘Morally Unacceptable’: Final Deal Out of COP24 Sorely Lacking in Urgency and Action, Climate Campaigners Say Common Dreams
The Case of Agatha Christie London Review of Books
Huawei Hullabaloo
Canada will ‘be on the losing end’ over Huawei arrest: professor CTV News
Our Famously Free Press
Apple News UK editors rely on six outlets for 75 percent of Top Stories Columbia Journalism Review
How I Quit Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Amazon Motherboard (martha r)
Where Can Apple Make Its iPhones If Not In China? International Business Times
Apple Computers Used to Be Built in the U.S. It Was a Mess. NYT
Syraqistan
How anger in Washington over Khashoggi’s murder has led to progress in the Yemen conflict Independent. Patrick Cockburn.
Class Warfare
Los Angeles and Oakland Teachers Rally Amid Deadlocked Contract Talks Capital & Main
LA Sheriff Eliminates Some Deputy Disciplinary Rules And Weakens Others Laist (martha r)
Brexit
Brexit: feeding the beast EUReferendum.com
Party activists pile pressure on Corbyn to back second vote Guardian
What the tactics of Middle East dictators can tell us about Theresa May’s political situation today Independent . Robert Fisk.
India
India’s gig-economy apps are fighting the monsters they made Quartz
Climate change is paving the way for shock-proof seeds Economic Times
Geoengineering: Should India Tread Carefully or Go Full Steam Ahead? The Wire Whatever could go wrong?
Laid bare: the limitations of identity politics The Telegraph
China?
Germany wins access to world’s biggest lithium deposit Handelsblatt
Big Brother IS Watching You Watch
China Is Now the Greatest Threat to Americans’ Privacy Bloomberg
Google says it won’t sell face recognition for now—but it will be hard to slow its use MIT Technology Review
British Security Service Infiltration, the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft 456 Craig Murray
Gilets Jaunes
‘It’s time for the people to take power’ Spiked (martha r)
Taking French Lessons: The Power of the ‘Yellow Vests’ TruthDig
martha r:
?⚠ #France: That moment when Macron’s police try to pepper spray #YellowVests protesters, but the protesters just pepper spray them back #Acte5 #Paris again ..
Tomorrow #resistance!!pic.twitter.com/ZYMwsm4YWy
— Compact News (@NewsCompact) 14 December 2018
Health Care
Federal judge in Texas rules all of Obamacare to be unconstitutional AlterNet
Pam Bondi’s (and Rick Scott’s) Texas-sized role in Affordable Care Act fight Tampa Bay Times (martha r)
Legal experts rip judge’s rationale for declaring Obamacare law invalid WaPo (The Rev Kev)
Democrats in Disarray
Does the Media Have It Out for Elizabeth Warren? Rolling Stone. Matt Taibbi
Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder Reuters (martha r)
‘Unregistered foreign agent’: Clinton Foundation oversight panel hears explosive testimony RT Chuck L: “I’m shocked, shocked that there’s barely a peep about this in the MSM.”
Trump Transition
The Criminal Justice Reform Bill You’ve Never Heard Of Marshall Project
Deportations under Trump are on the rise but still lower than Obama’s, ICE report shows WaPo
6-Year-Old Separated From His Father Tells Judge He Wants to Go Home ProPublica
FROM OBAMA TO TRUMP, CLIMATE NEGOTIATIONS ARE BEING RUN BY THE SAME CREW OF AMERICAN TECHNOCRATS The Intercept
‘He would have given up a very valuable appendage to get that job’ Politico
Antidote du jour:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
192 comments
Comments are closed.
Kia Ora to an online NZ Falcon hanging out in the Southern Alps?
antidote: common buzzard….buteo buteo…..
It would help if we knew where this photo was taken, but I very much doubt it’s a buzzard.
They usually have bald faces/heads, which are best for eating carrion.
My research suggests some kind of eagle, but even those results are pretty lame.
Great photo, however!
Here’s a photo of a common buzzard buteo and here’s a photo of a NZ falcon.
The NZ falcon has two black stripes starting at the corners of the beak and going down either side of it’s neck. Those are not apparent to me in today’s antidote (though I’m no expert). Eyes also look bigger (but photos/perspective may play a part)
I’ve been as close to a NZ Falcon as about a dozen feet away, a number of times. The winged ones are really docile in that bird world country.
Sure similar to the photo, but i’m not up on my buzzards.
Thanks for the links! It does look a lot like the common buzzard.
you are thinking of vultures, from google:
In the United States, when someone refers to a buzzard, it means a turkey vulture, a member of the New World vultures. Elsewhere in the world, a buzzard is in the same family as Old World vultures – Accipitridae – in the Buteo genus. In North America, the Buteo genus refers to hawks or buzzard hawks.
Names can be so confusing from place to place. In “Ameringlish” buzzard means vulture, usually specifically the turkey vulture. In “Englandish” buzzard does indeed mean . . . THE buzzard, Buteo buteo. The only species of genus Buteo to live in Britain.
Where was this picture taken? It looks like a “buteo” hawk, but which one? Here in Canadamerica, we have several to choose from.
Important: The Intercept Shorter restatement:
Our language lacks superlatives sufficient to characterize the mass murder & mass suicide entailed by a vote for any 2020 Presidential candidate who denounces the climate policies only of Trump, and not of Obama/Hillary.
Hysteria does not bring good policy.
Since this was entirely predictable:
… it appears intentional that W’s farce is being repeated as Trump era tragedy, as Bolton updates, in substance, the largely hollow rhetoric of W.:
There is a good chance that Canada will accidentally lose Meng as she skips bail and is spirited out of Canada.
Regarding Canada’s predicament following the arrest, detention and possible extradition to the U.S. of Hwawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou, think I’ll go with the observations of Larry Lindsey on December 12th in an article in Zero Hedge unless something happens that diverges from it.
My reading of his article is that essentially there is a temporary confluence of interests between Xi and Bolton, and that Meng will likely be released when “everyone thinks ‘the lesson’ has been learned”. Besides the obvious lesson that pervasive surveillance by the U.S. and Chinese governments is both global and ubiquitous, “The lesson” in Xi’s case is not to place your corporation’s interests over those of the Chinese government. In Bolton’s case “The lesson” is that U.S. enforcement of sanctions on Iran are to be taken seriously down to the individual executive level. (I think the IP theft issue is a red herring designed to play to domestic US audiences that don’t really care about or support his sanctions on Iran.)
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-12/larry-lindsey-something-about-huawei-cfo-arrest-doesnt-make-sense
IMO China’s subsequent arrest of two Canadians and possible impairment of Canada’s interests from being caught up in this episode are collateral damage that will be soon reversed following Meng’s return to China.
Re: “Unregistered foreign agent,” just curious, is this the same investigation the NY Times reported back in January?
Amid Calls from Trump, F.B.I. Renews Questions Over Clinton Foundation
“The Justice Department, in a letter sent in November to the House Judiciary Committee, said prosecutors would examine allegations that donations to the Clinton Foundation were tied to a 2010 decision by the Obama administration to allow a Russian nuclear agency to buy Uranium One, a company that owned access to uranium in the United States, as well as other issues.”
It’s funny to watch the plebes pretend the elite will bear any consequence for their rampant lawbreaking, how 1995 of them. The headlines are breathless:
“1MDB Dragnet Closes In On Goldman” and “Widespread Lawbreaking at Clinton Foundation”.
LOLOLOL
So let me get this straight: Lloyd Blankfein will soon be wearing an orange jumpsuit? And Hilary will get 10 years in a cell next to Bubba’s?
That’s fantastic stuff, have you ever tried doing standup?
“Apple Computers Used to Be Built in the U.S. It Was a Mess.”
Anybody see the parallels between Steve Jobs trying to set up an assembly line for his Macintosh computers back in the 80s and Elon Musk’s attempts to build up a working assembly line for the Tesla? In reading this story, it sounds like they’re blaming American workers for their failed attempt to assemble Mackintosh computers though I would bet anything that like Musk, Jobs would have not been much into quality control or giving intense training to his workers. What is the bet that in say another thirty years the New York Times will run a story called “Tesla Cars Used to Be Built in the U.S. It Was a Mess.”
“We don’t have a manufacturing culture,” Mr. Gassée said of the nation’s high-technology heartland, “meaning the substrate, the schooling, the apprentices, the subcontractors.” – Gassée
Why not?
I won’t bother with the answer. Seen it here many times.
But we do need the gilets jaunes here to put an end to it.
Easily explained: in Japan each worker has the right to stop the manufacturing conveyer if they cannot keep up with tempo or quality. Based on the feedback will they change positions ot whatever is needed. Compate this to American managers from the Ivy League educational institutions drawing up production lines according to some “productivity focus” then expect the worker to just adapt.
Most important in US production is to keep the power in places not the productivity and then the whole car industry must be bailef out.
Coming to amazon, when?
Amazon:
What Amazon needs is a strong union.
That’s odd. I clearly remember visiting clean rooms assembling circuit boards and putting peripherals together in Silicon Valley in the 80s.
Yes. There weren’t any problems building them here until C level execs realized they could bump their bonuses for a few quarters be exporting manufacturing to lower wage countries.
The article is crap, filled with a lack of supporting evidence about why it was so bad building here other than Apple couldn’t sell enough Macs at the time to justify the plant.
I read it as nothing more than PR for Apple about eventually repatriating manufacturing to the US
I worked in manufacturing lower level electronic components in the late 1970’s in Palo Alto,CA.
This was actually high mix/low volume manufacturing, something that does not fit well in a large scale factory.
At the time Silicon Valley manufacturing was already expanding into lower cost USA regions (Sacramento, CA, Boise, ID).
The quote from Gasse (of BeOS software fame) may sum it up for the future demise of USA industry, if it is true for other USA regions.
“We don’t have a manufacturing culture,” Mr. Gassée said of the nation’s high-technology heartland, “meaning the substrate, the schooling, the apprentices, the subcontractors.”
I wonder why they quoted someone known for a software background?
My jaundiced view of the USA has it first shipping less sophisticated manufacturing overseas, then more sophisticated manufacturing, then intellectual property and design.
One could wrap this all in one title “How to train your competitors and lose your manufacturing base”
I don’t understand the point of the article, is the author suggesting that because companies may not be able to profitably manufacture high volume products in Silicon Valley, the USA should not do manufacturing at all?
Reading the article’s conclusion I got the sick feeling that the reporter was convinced that the current model of outsourcing work to Asia is a triumph for the Valley and any other path would be purely quixotic. Really disturbing.
then they should build them in Germany.
China had the high-tech manufacturing culture in the 1980s and early 90s that the US lacked? China was only a few years past the Cultural Revolution at that point.
It is pretty clear that they were looking to develop a work force that would develop its workers to work for pennies on the dollars with few or not environmental regulations.
The discussion about manufacturing in high-cost California clearly did not envision manufacturing in other states that were and still are much lower cost, but not as low as China.
The story has been told a number of times. Essentially both Jobs and Ives were fanatics about detail and quality control, and it wasn’t possible to find US companies that would agree too the investment and training needed to make the components to the right tolerances. Companies in Asia would. It was the same story with the car and electronics industries in the 70s and 80s, where, as I remember, British companies went under because they couldn’t match the quality of the Japanese, and people were prepared to pay more for that quality. The decline in apprenticeships and manual skills (now alas just as much of a problem in France) is what’s ultimately behind it.
Coincidentally a buddy of mine just sent me this link today which is for an organization that purports to help people who either can’t afford or don’t want to attend a credential mill to find a job:
http://profoundlydisconnected.com
His comment was that while he likes the fact this organization exists, it only does because US companies are too stupid and selfish to train their own workers.
Hard to argue against that and the attitude seems to be pervasive – my kid’s 5th grade teacher recently regaled us at a parent teacher conference about how the education they are providing is already geared toward the kid getting a job some day. I tried to make the point that public schooling should be about making sure we have well rounded, educated, and responsible citizens, not good little worker bees. Judging by her expression she really didn’t expect to be disagreed with.
Strangely, starting in the early 70s, American companies started to reduce, then eliminate training programs, those same programs were cut from high school and colleges, and unions, which often promoted them, got the shiv from the Democratic “allies”.
It is hard to have find good workers if you prevent your workers from getting the skills they need to do the job and at the same time refuse to pay them enough to actually live on. As for Asian companies being so wonderful on quality while does everything I buy get increasingly craptastic?
I took some shop classes at the local community college about 15 years ago.
These covered automobile air pollution systems, automobile electrical systems and basic machining.
Very satisfying take these classes, even though I’ve been tinkering with stuff since a kid.
One instructor bemoaned that the senior school administrators viewed the school as divided into two parts, college prep and vocational ed, and did not support the vocational ed part well.
But he said: “But we get the jobs.”
A nation of college trained managers controlling overseas outsourcing is not going to work well for the USA.
Thank you, John. Most of the commenters here and elsewhere speak in the third person in the context of those “factory” “workers”.
Their attitude screams… .
So, yeh, I have a couple of doctorates in law and accounting or some such, but if ya don’t know how to do it, ya don’t know how to account for it let alone sell it… .
Their arrogance is a really big part of this problem.
By the way, I am a peasant from South Dakota and did attend a junior college as well.
The article was quite thin on why it was a mess, or the consequences to quality. No details as to the production line or why it wasn’t economically viable, other than “Asia was cheaper and better”.
Yes, thank you.
One of the NYT’s functions is keeping the professional class, nationally, singing from the same page of the music. That’s what this article is about.
A curious person reading the article would want to know why Apple couldn’t build a computer here. And what explanation do you get for it here? “Webs”, “substrate”, “manufacturing culture.” The dog ate my homework because there wasn’t a no-homework eating culture! There was no manufacturing here because there was no manufacturing here! And somehow Apple could manage a global supply chain, but not a national one? “A substrate will lie quiet if music is played to it,” to paraphrase Mark Twain.
Granted, the article makes a pass at specifics, like lack of supply chains, education, and apprenticeships — but goes nowhere with them. That tells you this article is about providing slogans.
You can only make fun of stories like this one, and you should. There has been some discussion here about how to get people, especially Trump supporters, thinking and talking about issues like this — having fun with articles like this one is a great way to do it. All hail the NYT for giving us such a great target!
This gets to the heart of the real issue — and the primary function of the NYT. Thanks for stating it so well.
The real issue is how to make stuff, not a bunch of jerks in NYC tall buildings.
The issue is how to make stuff anywhere on planet earth.
So, chico, if ya don’t make it, ya hafta buy it. To buy it, ya hafta pay for it with stuff I want which is explicitly not “US dollar” or MONEY.
If this comment is addressed to me, I admit I don’t get your point. But Cat Burglar’s comment was on the nature of the NYT article, not “how to make stuff.” The article *pretended* to be about that, or at least about why we no longer *make stuff* in the USA. But it was really little but a propaganda statement, as CB points out. That is the issue addressed. A lot of people here are well qualified to discuss the relevant technical or economic issues, and have. My comment was indeed about “a bunch of jerks in tall buildings” (at least one building), and what they try to get us to believe about the world.
Yes, thanks for that fine comment.
Its kind of curious that the article doesn’t mention that Apple owns one manufacturing plant, which has been in continuous operation since 1980 – in Ireland. Its recently expanded considerably.
My first mac (a 512/800, 1986) was Designed in California and Assembled in Ireland. But the mouse was Made in Japan. Manufacturing and assembling is not the same, but I’m sure that then some of the parts were Made in USA.
Now a days, I’m almost sure that the only thing made in Ireland is to change memory chips (if not soldered to the motherboard) and bigger hard drives to computers out of standard configurations (a feature that is disappearing in the last macs), and send computer parts to Apple Stores across Europe, for repair. All made in China.
Funnily enough, whilst having my morning cuppa I popped in to Lars, only to view one one of my favorite fundamental grievances.
The production function has been a powerful instrument of miseducation. The student of economic theory is taught to write Q = f(L, K) where L is a quantity of labor, K a quantity of capital and Q a rate of output of commodities. He is instructed to assume all workers alike, and to measure L in man-hours of labor; he is told something about the index-number problem in choosing a unit of output; and then he is hurried on to the next question, in the hope that he will forget to ask in what units K is measured. Before he ever does ask, he has become a professor, and so sloppy habits of thought are handed on from one generation to the next.
Joan Robinson The Production Function and the Theory of Capital (1953)
One of NC old contributors Philip even wrote a book wrt the topic and after putting it under the noses of a few so called economic practitioners … cough … ideologues [aka payed PR flim flammers] … the response I got was “he had some interesting things to say”. Even had a professed Keynesian – Tobin sort say ‘he had issues with Joan’ without saying why. Strange about that since it was Joan that pointed out and took to task those that “bastardized” Keynes to fit in the neoclassical framework.
So in retrospect we have Apple et al banging on about labours wants …. shezzzzz … when it’s those damn Tellietubbies [tm] again and not Putin, Xi, or some other scapegoat. But you’ll get that when you can’t formulate theory at onset and then compound error generationally, a single step in natural descent.
Brilliantly said. Thank you.
Best part is the own goal through head hunting to negate the skill development aspect … so homo economicus.
“I didn’t find it convincing” is another staple. This is typically delivered in the manner of a full and final refutation, complete in itself, with no supporting explanation or criticism. Mankiw and Krugman are fond of it.
Presumably, such functions have no side effects, and especially no side effects between function’s terms. Important for programming, not so true to the real world.
I’ve always drawn a parallel to programming code in the manner mainstream economics is administrated now days.
I think this avenue has been broached here on NC in the past … slaving minds to machine code, removing the human agency component for deeper introspection, new information, or dare I say intuitive processes developed though experience and knowlage in dealing with humans.
I also find various disciplines of economics or philosophical groups to have a propensity for computer code in their daily lives.
Re: Wiping The Slate Clean
There’s a great interview with Michael Hudson on this week’s On Contact with Chris Hedges all about the history of debt forgiveness.
https://youtu.be/AdPukQ96vEA
^^^^^^^^^^^WATCH THIS^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^Michael Hudson^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^piece^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
***The History Of Debt Forgiveness****
Enjoying it now, thanks.
Russian roulette is what some MSM boards are playing. They think that if they ignore the Clinton Foundation alleged crimes long enough then those will disappear into the Memory Hole.
What happens to the media companies (e.g., CNN) if those do not disappear? How will those board members address employees, their readers, investors, anyone? In today’s world, the employees would see pensions frozen at best or transferred to the Pension Benefit Guarantee fund, but not treated with the same consideration given the auto bailouts last decade.
“China Is Now the Greatest Threat to Americans’ Privacy”
No, the commercial organizations that collect and compile your personal and financial data, storing it for periods beyond when they actually need it, unencrypted, and on poorly secured networks and servers, are the greatest threat to privacy. Along with our own political system that isn’t that interested in establishing strong personal privacy rights because it would undermine their own ability to spy on and intimidate their citizens.
Good thought that. Couldn’t have said it better myself. The article also mentioned that “The other difference is that the U.S. government has not created the kind of database China is now amassing on millions of U.S. citizens.”. I wonder what the purpose of the NSA’s Utah Data Center is then?
Oh, and it’s Snowden’s fault, too:
“In hindsight, it’s clear that [Snowden’s] leak caused great damage. Snowden hindered the NSA’s ability to spy on Chinese computer networks, which helps companies such as Anthem and Marriott learn of digital intrusions. At the very least, this kind of quiet surveillance helps with attribution of hacks after the fact, which acts as a deterrence.”
Fear the Chinese! Resist all whistleblowers! Don’t worry about *our* intelligence community ever using info to blackmail politicians!
Not to mention, I’m not sure we’ve had any trouble attributing hacks to the Chinese government, nor do they seem to care. At this point it’s more embarassing for the US corps and government, their track record of safety and competence being about as good as Acme Corp.
Or, even better, government entities purchase the data from private companies using tax payer dollars. Law enforcement frequently accesses credit bureau and other data for “preventing crime and terrorism”.
Mentioning things like “facts” instead of the feels is going against the Approved Narrative, you know?
Look over there!!!
And we mopes are invited, encouraged even, every day, even by the articles posted here in NC, to just “accept that there is no (right of) privacy.” “Privacy” being one of those Big Words that has such a vast freight of meaning and so many threads and chains attached to it. All of which makes for what we now routinely call “weaponization” of the word itself, in the many contexts it gets used.
Anyone for Futilitarianism? http://www.amerika.org/politics/futilitarianism/
Well the means of communicating privately, even over the Internet, are literally at our fingertips. It’s just that no one’s using it, and the problem is it takes both sides doing it for it to work.
“You have zero privacy now. Get over it.” – Scott McNealy from Sun Microsystems in 1999.
Well said.
The “back doors” are people, yes?
Loved the French pepper spray firefight between the GJ and the coppers, but shudder to think what our law enforcement would do in a similar situation…
Ok, round #3 is in the books, and more recognition this time, as we went to the meet of the matter by hanging out @ the Sherman Tree in Sequoia NP. There was light snow on the ground and enough to offset our yellow nicely. Snow also really brings out the red-ish bark on the trees, as the ground cover of brown is extinguished.
It’s a powerful magnet for tourists, and draws them in like lichen. It doesn’t matter that a much more attractive Brobdingnagian is only a short walk away and is of smaller stature than the Sherman (the only Sequoia tree in the park with a fence around it) Tree, nobody hardly visits the majestic Chief Sequoya Tree, merely the 28th largest living tree in the world, poor thing.
http://famousredwoods.com/chief_sequoyah/
I figured its a numbers game, so I enlisted my wife to play through on this caper, and unlike a city situation where I could be easily thought of as a construction worker, this was the National Park, and has a real cosmopolitan feel, where sometimes it seems as if English is a 2nd language, with so many overseas visitors.
We milled about near the fenced in gargantuan, and the line to take a selfie with the Sherman (formerly the Karl Marx Tree) was never more than 5 during our half hour of making spectacles of ourselves.
It was the Europeans that commented to us, an English couple gave me a high-five, and a Frenchman that could barely speak our language was complimenting my wife’s bold fashion statement.
An American visitor asked why we were wearing them, and I told him we were in solidarity with the cause, and nothing more.
He wanted a detailed explanation out of me methinks, but I was as mime as Mike Pence henceforth.
I’m on the road currently, but plan on getting a vest for myself from a local construction-supply store (i.e., NOT Amazon, heh) once I get back. Gonna make the rounds of the super-rich malls in Redmond & Bellevue.
Also planning on dressing it up a bit with some hand drawn IWW Wildcat logos….not sure which ones yet. The standard ones in front, and maybe an ‘I Can Haz Union?’ on the back. That’ll just to insure its not completely mistaken for a real construction vest at close range.
Also, gonna 3D print out a bagful of guillotines to give to the chilluns. Well, OK maybe that’s a bit much — I’ll give those to any sympathetic adults. :)
Haha, sweet slogan!
Although the slogan is still a bit obsolete by modern combat meme arms race standards, I figure the ridiculously rich MSFT and other techies (and wives, and chilluns) who would see it might be slightly more sympathetic then pure IWW slogans.
Its blatantly ripped off from this site – credit where credit is due – which also has a few others worthy of consideration: http://thestreetlampdoesntcast.blogspot.com/2013/01/cats-for-chaos-anarchy-cats-picture.html
Myself – since I move amongst those IT-McMansion circles cuz work – (despite being born and bred amongst the deplorable caste) – will be sure to otherwise dress myself in wealth/class-appropriate clothes and accessories. Obviously, just another filthy rich Dev doing filthy rich Dev things at the mall.
Hope Paul Blart, Mall Cop, doesn’t taze me. I’ll be on my most polite and nerdy behavior obviously… :)
I was thinking of the one thing every American driver has on hand in their car, and phones could be utilized in portraying an image of somebody else wearing a yellow vest, and then said screen held aloft in solidarity panning the barricades.
hehehe +1 for absurdity
In my state a person who pepper sprayed a police officer would be arrested for aggravated assault. The state prosecutors are equipped with very broad and broadly interpreted statutes, a low bar for building their case and in my opinion even their most excessive interpretations the statutes are well supported in past case law. I believe the prosecutors would also have several easily associated violations they could pile on for using pepper spray.
Aggravated assault on police officer — A person is guilty of aggravated assault if he:
(5) Commits a simple assault as defined in subsection a. (1), (2) or (3) of this section upon:
(a) Any law enforcement officer acting in the performance of his duties while in uniform or exhibiting evidence of his authority or because of his status as a law enforcement officer; or
b. (5) is a crime of the third degree if the victim suffers bodily injury, otherwise it is a crime of the fourth degree.”
A plea bargain defense attorney will run ~$25K up-front. A case that goes to trial could run ~$40K – $50K. For the aggravated assault alone — without the added charges that may be loaded on and depending on the ‘degree’ of crime the prosecutor presses for — you could be looking at 3 – 10 years in state prison and a fine up to $150K. I suspect there is also some way to class yellow jackets as terrorists under the ‘Patriot’ Act.
That’s if you are arrested as some American police seem to have a proactive policy of shooting and then asking questions. I have never known police to be overly concerned with anyone’s welfare, but in the past few decades something has changed.
Also when I saw the clip of it pepper spraying, I was unnerved by how unthreatening the French police were. Yes, they were dressed in black and they were wearing helmets, but they were not encased completely in full body armor, helmets that encased the head completely, ballistic face masks underneath the visor, gigantic often completely black shields and festooned with large clubs, guns, tasers, and who knows what else, while trying to look and act like unfeeling robots dealing with the Mongol Horde.
Nobody was happy there and it was police facing protesters but it didn’t have the sheer fear and hate vibe with that American demonstrations sometimes have. Maybe that’s the point. No matter how peaceful I and whatever group I am with and no matter how justified we are in protesting, it is likely I will get my ass beaten by the police and possibly later railroaded by the prosecutor just for daring to think I have rights. I have seen the police get… brutally violent with my naked eyes and nothing happens to them. So maybe a few proactive beatings can keep the proles in their place.
What a country I live in.
My son made a miniature guillotine in, I think, middle school. It was very effective at beheading slugs (we are plagued with giant ones), but he still has all his fingers.
Wuk,
The police wear clear lexan plastic face shields.
A super-soaker water gun, or just a plain water pistol or even a large spray bottle–with the discharge hole enlarged with a hot pin to discourage clogging–can spray a mixture of water and water soluble paint–Yellow of course! to block and make useless those masks.
Remember, use water base, to be able to clean the discharge device before the contents dry, especially in the pump part.
Some police have to pay for their own uniforms.
If wetted quickly, the paint can be washed out. You want to ally them not alienate them.
How many of us are left, I actually had my slate cleaned quite often!
“Apple News UK editors rely on six outlets for 75 percent of Top Stories”
This reminds me of what Jimmy Dore says in how under Bill Clinton, laws were changes so that about 30 media organizations were allowed to amalgamate until there are only six left these day. So if Apple in the UK is relying on six outlets for their top stories, is it any different to how people in the US have to rely on six media organizations for their top stories?
https://archive.org/details/youtube-z3JLKw0q4kY
This clip which I saw live was cut from subsequent readings of SNL because per Lorne Michaels it “wasn’t funny.” Yes, a man who once hired Dennis Miller and allowed Larry David to quit can tell the difference between what is funny and not funny.
GE has since sold it’s controlling interest of NBC to Comcast which is why SNL is as relevant and as funny as its been since it was owned by GE.
Wow- thanks for that, NTG. I love Robert Smigel but never saw this. Just brilliantly scathing commentary in lyrical form. It’s pretty obvious why this got buried. One can only wonder how many phone calls Lorne Michaels got about it, from Jack Welch all the way down.
If memory serves, Smigel’s stuff aired right before the sketches to fill the second half of the show went on.
This clip only aired once, and considering what SNL will air, I doubt Lorne Michaels’ comic sensibility had much to do with it. Wasn’t GE lobbying for a tax subsidy/cut through business reporting at the time?
Oh yeah! Cue Sid and Marty’s giant koolaid punch bowl!
There is a lot of really good social commentary that the “New and Improved Politically Correct Lorne Michaels” made disappear down the Memory Hole.
Thank you.
Hacker gets into the highest levels of the White House…
And enough of the guillotine references already, now that cooler heads have prevailed in filling an important position.
It’s hard to gauge all the long term damage Zinke unleashed in cleaning house for a couple years of anybody ideologically suspect, or possessing any intelligence deemed detrimental to his interior deportment.
In a fashion, he was the guy you send into a thriving concern after a private equity firm acquired it, in order to strip anything of value, before declaring personal bankruptcy, in absolving himself by leaving his post and going absent without liability.
p.s.
Gary Larson, I know you are well rested and still have it in you, please consider doing comics again…
The Farce Side
It’s hardly a battle that started with Trump nor did the Clinton and Obama interregnums from “Wise Use” provide much of a pushback. Clinton was fully down with the Gingrich “fee demo” program which–ideologically–advanced the cause of public lands as an exploitable resource (in that case for tourism) rather than all too vulnerable heritage. As with most things, Trump took the standard Republican (and laissez faire Democrat) agenda and just made it more brazen. But perhaps a Dem House will put on the brakes–or at least tap the pedal.
McZinkeism went down to all levels, and with the NPS in particular, where they do research largely without bias. Which NPS employee with a masters in something prestigious and something nearly as glamorous-a full time NPS job, is going to risk it by stating the obvious too vociferously to his or her master’s voice that isn’t listening, can’t hear you, see ya.
” ~‘He would have given up a very valuable appendage to get that job’~”
Well, there is a “head” and there is “head.” Take your choice.
Sounds to me like he didn’t much want it but Trump wanted him to take it and wanted to make it look like he was dying for it. That story smells of a plant.
Gary was never political. But I think Scott Adams is One of Us at heart, if he ever gets over his 60 year old jack self and stops [familyblog]ging ‘models’ at home.
I miss his written blog; I just can’t be arsed with that Periscope video bullet points thing, I skim text far faster than I can listen.
Non-paywalled copy of FT Gillian Tett review of Michael Hudson (whew!)
https://michael-hudson.com/2018/12/ft-wiping-the-slate-clean-is-it-time-to-reconsider-debt-forgiveness/
80some pages of Prof. Hudson on my new fav subject. Aw yeah.
https://www.scribd.com/document/53645620/Hudson-Michael-The-Lost-Tradition-of-Biblical-Debt-Cancellations
Might have to subscribe. Only $9/month, what a bargain.
Gilets Jaunes
Funny that video via martha r on the cops getting a dose of their own medicine. I had a thought earlier today on how things could have been worse in France. Trump is still trying to force Germany to kill the Nord Stream 2 project and buy the much more expensive American LNG instead, right? Now just supposing that Bolton or Pompeo winds up Trump enough to invoke 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. It would mean it would be basically illegal to have trade with Russia, including Russian gas. If Germany folded then the rest of the EU would also fall into line, especially since there are countries that would like to see this result like Poland and the Baltic countries.
So lets follow this to its logical conclusion. Without Russian gas, prices would skyrocket and supplies would become far tighter. America probably wouldn’t be of much help as they are still bringing in tankers of Russian LNG themselves. Now as to France, I found a page called “Sources of natural gas imported in France” at https://www.gasinfocus.com/en/indicator/sources-of-natural-gas-consumed-in-france/ which shows that last year France got 26% of its gas from Russia. Could you imagine what would happen if Macron came out and said as we can’t get Russian gas and everybody is scrambling for gas from places like Norway and Algeria, so sorry, but we are going to have to double the price of gas to heat your homes this winter? Being a neoliberal, he would also say, by the way – from the gas we get, industry gets all its needs satisfied first or some of their profits might drop. Sorry about that.
the sock puppetry and troll farming continues apace. see the comments:
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/taking-french-lessons-the-power-of-the-yellow-vests/
and of course Kos….on the apparent go-to page for the yellow vests’ demands(a little dated), the arguments by the agents of confusion are transparent. it’s like it’s 2015, and Herself still had moxy:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/12/9/1818046/-Demands-of-the-Yellow-Vests-or-Gilets-Jaunes
there are many other places where the same is happening….”now now……they’re all right wingers and racist deplorables…” as if it’s simple common sense “the sky is blue”.
The list of demands on the latter link…being either ignored or cast aside as teaparty hate and idiocy.
the good news is that these defenders of the status quo appear to have no defenders, themselves.
That’s a change from 2 1/2 years ago.the veil is torn, flapping in the wind.
fie!
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/0/0c/The_Mouth_of_Sauron.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/350?cb=20140517015618
I am confused by what I am seeing from thousands of miles away. In particular this in the truthdig article:
Some unknown fraction of the protest energy comes from people who don’t want French tax dollars supporting Muslim immigrants and descendants of Muslim immigrants. I don’t know how to discern what this fraction is. 5%? 60%? The author of the truthdig article seems to think this is a minor detail. I question this, to say the least.
People starting fires is alarming. The author of the truthdig article asserts that violent protesters are a very small minority of right wingers which seems presumptuous to me. Again I am thousands of miles away and trying to decode the dope that I see in my web browser and I don’t think it adds up. I sure as heck do not want people starting fires in my zip code I can tell you that.
It’s not clear where or when the video was taken – I haven’t seen any coverage of it in the French media. Outside the major cities, at the roundabouts where the GJ tend to congregate, as here, relations between the police and demonstrators have usually been friendly. These are ordinary police, not the crowd control groups which were deployed in the major cities this weekend.
Speaking of which, yesterday’s protests were on a much smaller scale, for all sorts of reasons: horrible weather, difficulty in getting to Paris, imminence of Christmas and start of school holidays. But as several thoughtful commentators observed, it also reflects a change of tactics by the GJ. If a couple of thousand people can paralyse a city centre, not even because of their actions but because of fear of those who might join them later, then you are free to tie up much of the power of the state in the cities, and go off and disrupt elsewhere. In the short term the government has little choice but to continue to lock down the big cities every weekend, but there’s a limit to how long they can do it. Many of the police and gendarmes sympathise with the protesters anyway: outside the big cities they come from the same communities. Their representatives have been making warning noises.
What’s important though is that this crisis has given ordinary people a voice for the first time, and enabled ordinary people to see other ordinary people on TV. There was an interview yesterday morning with a very articulate woman on one of the roundabouts who was, said the caption “a housewife.” I doubt if a housewife has ever been interviewed about politics on French TV before. This is a major change, which will take some time to work through.
Thanks for this update report. US MSM reporting has more spin that usual.
re role of media (gilets jaunes). Also,like David saw more than one highly articulate “ordinary person” interviewed on French TV.
Although of course there are/will be, especially in US/UK (anglosaxon!!) mass media, attempts to classify the GJ revolt as manifestations of various flavours of “deplorables”, the strongest and most consistent message coming through via all the French TV and radio channels, (even the most right-wing haven`t been able to swamp the message by the usual means) is that it is a revolt of the victims of decades of neolib policies, and, for once, the blame is not being placed on immigration or (as in the UK after the GFC) on benefit fraud and the proles living above their means, but squarely and seemingly unanimously on the shoulders of the elites who have instigated, promoted and imposed these socially destructive policies!!!!!!!!
(Direct (subjective, personal/by chance) experience in the streets of Paris last week confirmed this picture 100%)
Of course the movement is multi-form, people don`t all agree on the way out of their predicament but near unanimous is the sense of injustice, of a system stacked against the people in favour of a tiny elite.
This would be impossible in the UK.
I think it is possible in France for many reasons, not least that, especially since the GFC, there has been wide and often deep analysis of the causes of the crash; neo-liberalism is constantly discussed on the media – all positions at some stage get an airing – it is impossible in France not to be at least a little aware of the mechanisms at work. In the UK this is totally impossible.
Just now on France 5 there is a discussion called “les intellectuels avec les gilets jaunes”, also an impossibility in the UK! Most of the discussion is about neo-liberalism, not missing out the betrayal of the so-called left who have embraced these policies for several decades in all our countries and yet still get called “the left”!!!!
Generally, (outside “intellectuals”), there is much discussion about the feelings of abandonment felt in provincial France (low wages, no work, public services disappearing). Worse, the feeling of these people in desperate financial straits (often the working poor) that they are actually despised by the elites and their political enablers. The word “mépris” keeps recurring.
So, what a disappointment seeing in recent days all sorts of GJ being spawned in the world, exposed to a different media representation of what the GJ are about, some scape-goating the cause of their despair supporting Brexit or blaming immigration exclusively.
I would just add that the GJ seem to be highly representative of the roughly 80% of the population who live outside the centre of the major cities, often in small towns, distant suburbs or in rural areas. They are not really a movement, but rather a cross section of ordinary people, who between them cover just about all of the non-elite shades of opinion. Thus, whatever you want to believe about the GJs, you can find support if you look hard enough in the interviews and the online comments.
Unlike the opinions of elites, which are bought from the equivalent of luxury delicatessens and swallowed unexamined, ordinary people base their opinions and their wishes on their own life experiences. If you lost your job because your employer brought in cheap expendable labour from Rumania, you might have doubts about the wisdom of immigration; if you are a pensioner whose net income has been cut, you might have views about government priorities, and if you are a farmer driven to bankruptcy by fruit imported from Spain where the state turns a blind eye to the exploitation of illegal cheap labour and poor working conditions, you might have views about EU regulations which France enforces and other states don’t, necessarily. One of the main reasons why the MSM are having such a problem understanding them is that the GJs talk about how life is actually lived, whilst political discourse over the last generation has largely excluded such trivialities.
germane to the whole mess:
https://iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2018_Fall_Malesic.php
I can’t say I felt very dignified very often when I was working…save for a very few discreet instances…and many of those, I had to force the issue.
(like near work stoppage to prove my indispensability(I was a ninja in the kitchen))
the social contract is hopelessly marred…it’s just that the palliatives of credit, cheap geegaws, etc are no longer covering this fact for an increasing number of people.
I’ve been wandering in team blueland today…Kos and alternet…
and the total disdain for anyone who would 1. feel solidarity with the gilets jaunes, and/or 2. criticize obamacare, or the neoliberal order in general, is palpable. The good thing…as i said earlier…is that the number of people who ARE feeling that solidaristy/giving that criticism is much greater than even a year ago.
Excellent breakdown of who the GJ are from David. I fully agree. I was just making a point about the vast difference in perception of what the causes of the condition of the mass of the population in our current western economies and its link to the dominant framing of debate in the media. So, thank you for filling in the detail I had to leave out better than I could have anyway.
On another subject, I was pleased to see Michael Hudson`s incomparable work acknowledged in an article in FT of all places but really disappointed in Gillian Tett`s article. The link someone posted to his interview with Chris Hedges (On Contact) re Hudson`s fascinating work on the role of debt in the economy was excellent and gave us a full historical sweep from Babylonian times so that the structure whole edifice was revealed – a terrifying description of where we are and how we got here. Highly recommended. What a genius!
Thanks for these details that go missing in most US MSM reports.
I suppose you have this partially correct. But only partially.
You might think a bit along the line that “resources are limited” in a finite world including with respect to you, me and everyone else?
By the way, you all are still missing the fundamental “assumption” contemporary economists make including Adam Smith and Karl Marx?
you all are? how do you know that? And more importantly why are assumptions contemporary economists make important? Don’t they basically know nothing? And why the quotey thing around assumptions. I mean resources are limited, but fiat? not so much. Writing teachers would tell you that using vague identifiers such as “it” and “they” (“you” doesn’t go in there as it’s aggressive in attribution, i.e. “you are bad” is more aggressive than “they are bad”) need more specifics, like why are they as they are? Resource limitations are ignored until they can’t be ignored any more. Is that in one of your economics textbooks?
If you read several of citizen K’s comments you’ll see a remarkable change in voice. Makes me wonder who or what is on the other end. heh.
And how many?
Plus, the mix of Human, Zeta Reticulan, and AI.
ha! Zeta Reticulan, for sure.
One of my favourite Conspiracy Theories says that since the major oil cartels of the last century were known as the Seven Sisters, plus the Pleiades star grouping, where Zeta Reticuli resides, are also called the Seven Sisters, that Anthropocentric warming of the biosphere is part of a ‘sinister plot’ to Reticulaform the Earth for future colonization.
Oh those wily Spacies!
Biden, Sanders lead field in Iowa poll.
“The newspaper Iowa depends upon”?
Really? Biden 32% to Bernie’s 19%? Ugh I swear that Bernie won the Iowa Caucus for 2016 and the idea that we may have another potentially fixed Caucus is abhorrent. Maybe this could be categorized under “Kill Me Now”!
Would it be impossible to imagine the Dem Primary, this time, to be fixed from start to
finish? This isn’t the first poll™ to improbably show Biden with a massive lead over Senator Sanders. Wonder what they’ll do about the pesky problem of massive crowds showing up for Sanders, while likely having to pay people to show up for Biden, as with her-almost-highness?
Bernie ran dead even with Hillary in 2016.
He hasn’t changed his message (except for supporting Her Highness after she stole the nomination). Polling at 19% is pretty dismal for someone who is supposedly “the most popular politician in America.”
Dem party fix from start to finish?
I don’t know. Primaries and caucuses are state events, and plenty of states felt they got burned in 2016.
Now Dem DNC Chair Tom Perez is going to war with Dem state parties.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/16/democrats-perez-state-parties-1066665
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez launched an attack on his own party’s state organizations Saturday with a long and angry email over the future of the party’s most valuable asset — its voter data file.
…
It‘s the latest fight in a quickly escalating war over the trove of Democratic voter information — a conflict that broke into the open at a gathering of the state parties and the DNC in Puerto Rico late last month. The party’s data are largely owned by the state parties, …
…
The DNC wants to gather all the data points on voters into a new, massive for-profit database but needs to convince state parties on the idea. The state parties have been wary, accusing the DNC of conducting a power grab that could financially benefit a few elite party figures.
Why bother with building a 50-state campaign? Just swipe 50 states’ data instead, as a money making for-profit database venture.
It’s notoriously impossible to run reliably accurate polling for a caucus.
Perhaps Sanders should not base his plans and strategy upon what happens in the infinitely riggable and fundamentally dishonest and fake Iowa Caucuses.
Certainly Sanders will have to show up there to make a show of appeasing the Fake MSM and its Fake Reporters by taking their obsessions with “Iowa” ( and “New Hampshire” as well) seriously. But that doesn’t mean he has to rely upon the results of “Iowa” and “New Hampshire” to mean anything.
Just found this and thought that I would mention it as it is so bizarre-
“The rich are different from you and me” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
https://www.rt.com/news/446585-prada-blackface-toys-anger/
Interesting LRB about Agatha Christie and how she wildly succeeded by “staying within her lane.” Still one should point out that this is one crowded bit of roadway with many or most scripted shows on both PBS and our US commercial TV consisting of murder mysteries. Surely Edmund Wilson was right when when he describes the genre as a puppet play that is more like a crossword puzzle or a game–in short a pastime–than literature. Even Conan Doyle created more interesting characters which have survived almost any filmed version and actor (except Cumberbatch).
No doubt though that the “power of narrative”–what happens next–will always be compelling. The Dems are trying the technique even now in their hoped for international mystery story starring our often dubious president.
Not being a “staying within her lane.” type of person, I have found well developed characters dealing with societal issues and mores (usually set in foreign lands) in a detailed historical grounding (while using murder-mystery as the vehicle) to be superior and satisfying compared to the NYT bestseller adverted offerings so prominently displayed in my library and elsewhere which I quit reading long ago. Messy or unresolved endings mirror life far better than super hero or technological solutions to the human problems at the root of conflict.
Thank you Donna Leon, Louise Penny, Elliot Pattison, Martin Walker, Qiu Xiaolong and many others.
I’m glad you enjoy them. It’s not really my thing.
But it is the LRB author who says “staying within her lane” and he is contending that Christie was superior to her competitors precisely because of her lack of literary pretensions (while still offering up a kind of social commentary).
WH Auden once said that obsessive readers of classic detective stories, like him, were usually haunted by feelings of sin. The point about Christie’s books, and similar, is that all sorts of characters have a motive for the murder, and in the end it’s largely a matter of chance who the actual killer is. This is the image of a fallen world in which we are all, in practice, guilty. The actual “murderer” is essentially the sacrificial scapegoat, punished for the sins of the whole, which is why many of Christie’s books have an Edenic setting, and why the thought of somebody actually being hanged for murder clearly disturbed her.
Neat, thanks!
W.H. Auden, “The Guilty Vicarage,” Harpers, 1948, concluding:
Am I the only one who got to see the first paragraph of the article and then a box demanding my e-mail address? This is the first time for this for my perusals of the LRB. A paywall for the LRB is coming next. (If not already here.)
i got the same thing
Reading those cosy Home Counties female writers who flourished in the war-to-war period: including Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, plus Enid Blyton, Richmal Crompton, Josephine Tey and others tells you all you need to know about the wet dreams of the Brexit Blimps. It’s that comfortable Upper Middle and Lower Upper Class world of little villages and Big Houses with bus services for the commoner and British built motors for the aspiring, cheap taxis for those who won’t soil themselves (yet) with driving, cheap but loyal maids, and reliably forelock-tugging proletarians in functional mechanical, gardening, railway-servant and corner-shop roles, who _always_ knew their place. George Orwell did a number on it, in his “Decline of the English Murder”, though he was of that world and so his writing has some of the same “atmosphere” as he would put it.
Growing up anywhere in post-war England, you couldn’t avoid being exposed to all of this Home County bric-a-brac through endlessly passed around copies of their novels, cause it is almost all there was available to read (not counting the Anglicized versions of Reader’s Digest, which also had its own ‘atmosphere’). It was such a relief when the Science Fiction of Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison, Brian Aldiss, J.G. Ballard, John Wyndham, Frederick Pohl, Larry Niven, Philip K. Dick came into view from the 60s and 70s onwards. Nicely dystopian stuff, writ on a much larger canvas.
The sooner we’re done with the Brexit propaganda, the better.
(Which is not to say that the LRB analysis of Agatha Christie’s oeuvre isn’t spot on, because it is).
Thanks for the interesting comment. Here in America our PBS is in love with cosy (we would say cozy) although they will from time to time attempt shows or mini series that are a bit more cutting edge.
I have to say I am rather amused by the idea that murder mysteries where any number of village regulars could be or were the murderers because of greed, jealousy, mental defect or any other numerous human conditions are the reason that so many people voted for Brexit. That a village life unfamiliar except in fiction to numerous British residents induced them to vote to exit the European Union. I must admit that it never occurred to me that the lifestyle of a whipsmart English spinster in post war Britain would be more influential than say promises of increased funding for the National Health Service.
Of course since those dystopian futures of the Science Fiction you mention have also had decades of time and popularity to influence the British public, I have to wonder if perhaps the real reason for Brexit was to hurry on the dystopia.
But then I think a better explanation is that the dystopian future for a huge segment of the populace produced by our leadership, Britain and America, have led that populace to reject the policies they see as having produced that state – not some imaginary Christie or Norman Rockwell vision of small town life.
When you are living in H—, or a nearby suburb of, any vision of a ‘Happy Valley’ or a ‘Shining City on a Hill’ will entice and beckon. In recent America, there was, is, and probably always will be stories of ‘Strong Silent Heroes and Heroines’ who beat that nasty old dystopian future ‘into shape.’
Dystopian stories have the virtue of dispelling ‘Happy’ illusions with slightly more realistic ‘Unhappy’ illusions.
While it might be interesting to have a literary discussion of the reality of science fiction dystopia versus the reality of post war mysteries, I’m still not willing to blame them for the choices of the populace.
Nostalgic fiction or memory of options now denied? We have discussions on this very thread of the reality of health care and insurance in America? Are the people who rejected the ACA is all we need position really basing that on unrealistic expectations or is the real propaganda that ACA provides affordable health care? Have real middle class jobs disappeared in American and in Britain over the last thirty years because people believed Midsomer or Happy Days existed? Or did they disappear because of corporate greed, political corruption and policies that actually encouraged this loss?
Did Hillary Clinton really offer the majority of Americans the better choice with her status quo campaign? Did the Remain Camp make the case that staying offered more opportunity than leaving? Or did both fail to recognize that continuing the same policies that people recognized as being destructive to their lives and the futures of their children without finding a way to mitigate or reverse that was a recipe for people willing to roll the dice on change?
I’m not saying people didn’t buy a pig in a poke, I just don’t happen to think that our fictional memes were more influential than years of evidence that the same was the path to ruin and the unreasonable that a change – any change- could perhaps halt or slow that.
The problem in both cases was not the choice people made – the problem was that no choice was available that wasn’t destructive, dystopian, roads to hell in a handbasket. Fictional genre, be damned.
Hmm, well I’m not suggesting that all 17.4 million voted Leave because they were influenced by cosy Home Counties memories, because most of them live in the ‘Away’ Counties (FYI the Home Counties are those in commuting distance of London. The rest of us are ‘Them’, not ‘Us’ to them, if you follow my drift) But I am suggesting that a sufficient proportion of the older ones wanted that return to British (English) ‘greatness’ as to swing the balance. Lots of Labour constituency voters also voted Leave because (a) they were tired of Tory Austerity and (b) they wanted, and got a direct opportunity, to stick it to Cameron. They were not fully informed of the collateral damage that would ensue. If all they read is the Daily Mail, Sun, Express, they are still not clearly informed.
While I admired the analysis of Agatha Christie’s oeuvre, I do see the timing and tenor of the article as akin to the Brexit propaganda that aims to bamboozle those who can be bamboozled. A distinctively non-zero faction.
Although mind you, none of them are likely to be reading the London Review of Books.
Factions in their basic forms. Zeros and Non-Zeros.
Still a binary system.
Insofar as fiction has shaped the aspirations of the mass of the populace, fiction can also ‘nudge’ those aspirations along. Can we apprehend the ‘hidden hand’ of a ‘Consent Manufactory’ at work? The tension between the hidden desires of people and those desires deemed ‘acceptable’ by society drives the popular literary scene.
A revealing essay about English ‘Boys Literature’ of the last century is in Orwell’s collection, “Inside the Whale and Other Essays.” The essay is “Boys Weeklies.”
It turned out that the stories Orwell criticized as the work of a stable of pro-status quo writers were the works of one man, Charles Hamilton. An interesting insight into the methods and meanings of propaganda aimed at the young. (There were ‘Girls Weeklies’ as well, similarly pro status quo in outlook.)
Read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys%27_Weeklies
Charles Hamilton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hamilton_(writer)
I would essay to state that all literature depends on a society wide agreement on the meanings of words.
Heavens to Murgatroyd! We’re edging in the direction of Wittgenstein!
Enough for now.
Best little madrassa in Texas: Baylor ties pervade rape case that sparked uproar [AP]
Thanks, jefemt, for the link
I thought that this made a nice bookend for the Clinton Foundation unregistered foreign agent story: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/421572-hillary-clinton-writes-letter-to-8-year-old-girl-who-lost-class
“The most important thing is that you fought for what you believed in, and that it is always worth it. ”
Two hundred fifty million dollars later I am sure that she believes that in her very bones. Break that glass ceiling! Boys shouldn’t be the only ones to enjoy the spoils. An admirable sentiment, indeed.
Even when she does something nice it’s all about her.
Re: ACA
Since I lost my full time contract, I’ve been paying out of pocket for health insurance. I signed up for a plan from Nov-Dec that was $7 after my tax credit (I don’t make much of anything as an adjunct but don’t qualify for any other kind of assistance except for the healthcare tax credit). Then the market place starts blowing up my email and phone telling me I have to find a new plan ASAP because the one I’m currently enrolled in is going to jump astronomically. So I look for a new plan on the Market Place but I can’t find the plan I’m already enrolled in to compare it to other plans, even with the increase.
I get some mail saying I’ve automatically been renewed for my insurance and the monthly premium is going to go from $7 to $35. I’m like well fine, everything else on the Market Place was $20 more a month out of pocket and covered way less. But I asked my friend who does tech consulting for the ACA what the hell that was all about and he said the plan it seems that the plan I was already enrolled just withdrew itself from the market place but decided to keep me on.
I have no idea what the hell happened but I’ve called 3 times to make sure I’ve got health insurance and they say I do so I’m just going to keep paying them until I move to Maine, and then I have to deal with all this bullshit all over again.
The insane thing is that I live with an MD, who himself has crappy insurance because he’s a resident and the university hospital doesn’t want to pay for decent insurance for them. Hell, they don’t even do a 401K match for residents.
That sounds unnerving. I hope it works out. I remember going back and forth with a previous contracting company, because they were completely incompetent, trying to get health insurance and not knowing if they would figure it out or I’d be out of luck on coverage. It’s stressful indeed. It’s life and death.
Dealing with BS. That’s been my experience with my Obamacare insurance.
OTOH, my mom is on Medicare and it works for her. I think it could work for all of us.
Just get rid if the d–n donut hole problem. Make coverage seamless. As a bonus, that would eliminate a chunk of insurance company profiteering as well.
You are too wise, good sir ..
The plebes will continue to get reamed .. seemlessly .. until we have our own continental confab of angry yellow jackets !!
You have just defined the phenomenon for the Americas.
In Europe, polite-lite Yellow Vests demonstrate.
In the ‘New World,’ swarms of angry ‘Yellow Jackets’ will riot.
The dreaded Yellowjacket: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowjacket
(Take it from me. You do not want to have these little fellows take an interest in you. I speak from painful experience.)
Re your MD friend with crappy insurance: I was just at the hospital the other day and had a conversation about hospital costs with the woman who registered me for my CT test: I told her that they had best drag me out of the CAT scanner by my heels if they find any percentage of it is not covered by my insurance, as I would refuse to pay for it and put it in writing. It sounds like even hospital employees have got terrible insurance, which kind of blew my mind and subsequently made me feel a little bad about my insistence upon getting such caveats all in writing in the computer system. Sounded like this woman basically has to pay for her entire year of health care out of pocket before her insurance kicks in!
I couldn’t believe that. They are killing their own employees whilst doctors I have known don’t know what to do with the all of the money they have socked away. We really do need a more equitable system.
nippersdad, same thing happened here-I was in for some tests and the NP treating me said I was lucky to have the insurance I did, and that it was so much better than theirs(the hospital employees). She said theirs is downright awful and hardly covers anything. You’d think it would be the opposite.
I feel like a whiner, but here is the tale of my spouse, retired, who has one more year before Medicare kicks in. He signed up with Kaiser Permanente last year, after his COBRA ran out: $650 a month. This year, he re-enrolled, same plan but with a 25% increase in monthly premium. When he called to ask why the big jump, they told him that it was due to the new ACA rules that allowed people to opt out of insurance and not pay a penalty. So, all the old and sick people are now covered, but the young and healthy are going without. Wreaks hell on costs.
I have Medicare, fortunately. But we now are paying out of pocket for dental care. And eye exams, glasses, etc. Fortunately, we can afford it, but the whole so-called health-care system is rotten to the core.
Insurance is paid for by the participants who don’t use it. Letting the young and healthy opt out of ObamaCare dooms it (which of course is the idea). But the basic problem was making it an insurance system in the first place…
The Rolling Stone link on Warren seems like a restatement of the loaded question, “do you still beat your wife?”. There’s no escaping these narrative traps the Establishment media sets up for candidates not favored by the Establishment. The only winning move is not to play. I’m glad to see Sanders is developing his own social media megaphone.
What does it mean to “quit” Apple? I’d never been a user of Apple products, I never cared. I like my cheap LG 6.1 Android phone, which works well enough. What am I going to do with an iPod or an iPad, exactly? I don’t care about Apple’s ecosystem offers, iCloud or whatever, or iTunes, or any of their connected stuff.
But the Macbook Pro has been a game changer for me. Unlike with Windows or especially a Linux laptop, it *just works*. I nearly never encounter any serious issues, and the few minor things I could resolve. The only service issue I have had, the battery swelling so much the laptop didn’t sit flat, Apple fixed free of charge. (The fact that it happened is disappointing and somewhat disturbing, but Apple did fix it.)
I actually only just recently rebooted, after over 250 days of uptime. I’ve opened and closed the lid hundreds of times since then. Every time, it resumes nearly instantly. I don’t even think very recent Linux version do this. No more worrying about dropping an open laptop because I don’t want to close the screen and wait minutes for it to resume.
That said, I don’t use iTunes for anything. I don’t use any of Apple’s apps at all. Just the hardware. I have no inclination to ever buy any other apple products, either. I don’t care about the ecosystem. The Macbook Pro, at least the 2015 version, is decent hardware, with a decent OS. I still don’t regret buying it refurbished from Apple in 2016 for a 10% discount. As long as it lasts another 4-6 years, I’ll be happy.
I can understand quitting social media. That’s a vacuous blackhole.
I do use Google for mail, searching, apps, and so forth. I’m willing to pay that price, probably because like most I don’t actually know what the bill will be or when it’s due. Life is about tradeoffs in an uncertain world. (But I do think twice every time I hit Post somewhere, whether that will revisit me in some sinister way in the distant future.)
Granted this doesn’t touch on the fact that my Android phone does track my every second movements, which is legitimately disturbing, but not yet enough to search out a legacy brick-phone.
The world we’re unwittingly building, I’m not sure it’s one we’re going to be proud of.
I see this problem from the bottom of the pile and now realize that TINA, (There Is No Alternative), formerly an acronym to be derided, is becoming TINAA, (There Is No Alternative Allowed,) a term to be feared.
IWTBLA, (I Want To Be Left Alone,) is being redefined as a crime. I will soon be a criminal. That’s going to be a large new feeder population for the Prison Industrial Complex.
It’s a shame we don’t (yet) have a Pan-Opt-Out-Icon.
Thank you for the info on TINA, I never knew what it meant, and as someone totally out of the system I am so guilty of IWTBLA
A few years ago, a comment by a police officer in the local fish wrapper was to the effect that if you weren’t on Farcebook there was something wrong with you and had something to hide.
I suspect him or her were told by superiors to stop the Crazy Talk because I never read it again, but the officer was just ahead of his or her time.
I suspect all Operating Systems work better for each user with their hardware when users take the time to get the computer assembled with basic operating functions. Then add other programs and apps sparingly and only when a necessity (something that will be used the majority of the time when you boot up).
When you’ve installed the programs more “a la carte,” it’s easier to troubleshoot when there is an issue.
I’ve never gotten into tablets. My first impression of them is that I would have to spend to much time stopping it from doing or suggesting things I have zero interest in.
Amazon’s HD Fire 8 really, really wants me to enable Alexa. I keep telling it no. I only bought it for the multiple connecting flights I’m taking for the holidays, as I loathe flying and it will give me something to do. The seats on Delta are way too small for me to just use my laptop, sadly. When someone tipped the seat in front of me back last time, I thought I was going to get crushed. I was left with maybe 2 feet between me and the chair.
And you were lucky.
(Pre) Monty Python skit
Yellow Vest protesters come out across Canada:
https://globalnews.ca/news/4766724/yellow-vest-protest-canada/?utm_source=Other&utm_medium=MostPopular&utm_campaign=2014
Recently signed UN compact on immigration also has political repercussions in Belgium.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4746558/un-migration-compact-belgium-government/
This well-intentioned compact has the potential, I think, to fracture the EU even more than it is currently fractured.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4745648/united-nation-migration-pact-countries/
From this
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/15/morally-unacceptable-final-deal-out-cop24-sorely-lacking-urgency-and-action-climate
to this
http://peaksurfer.blogspot.com/2018/12/decapitalism-by-yellow-vest.html
with this:
Shale oil has changed a lot of things in the oil industry, but it couldn’t avoid the decline of conventional oil. That, in turn, had consequences: shale oil is light oil, not easily converted to the kind of fuel (diesel) which is the most important transportation fuel, nowadays. That seems to have forced the oil industry into converting more and more “heavy” oil into diesel fuel but, even so, diesel fuel is becoming gradually more scarce and more expensive, to the point that its production may have peaked in 2015. In addition, it has created a dearth of heavy oil, the fuel of choice for marine transportation. In short, the famed “peak oil” is arriving not all together, but piecemeal — affecting some kinds of fuels faster than others.
https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2018/12/peak-diesel-or-no-peak-diesel-debate.html
Globalization and the US economy are very heavily tied to truck, train, and ship transportation of goods from far far away. The truck, train, and ship transportation runs on diesel. Thank you very much for your comment. Any further links or information on this topic would be much appreciated. I am concerned with the impacts of diesel costs and availability on the transportation of goods through our ever lengthening logistics chains.
In regard to Legal Experts Rip Judges Rationale (WaPo), Prof. Gluck, of Yale, argues the Judge O’Connor is not correctly interpreting the will of Congress in 2017, which not the matter at issue, of course. She states that if congress did not strike the rest of the ACA then the O’Connoe cannot justifiable declare the mandate inseverable. The amount of stretching and bending to avoid mentioning that issue at hand is constitutionality, not interpreting the will of congress, and the the Supreme Court decision that upheld ACA is explicit in stating that the mandate is the only factor that makes ACA a tax and thus constitutional are studiously ignored throughout the article. Indeed, the rest of the article goes on about the number of decisions that upheld ACA’s constitutionality, but it never goes into details, and you won’t find any mention of the Supreme Court’s decision or how they came to their decision.
Struck by the lack of substance to the article and it’s intentional deceitfullness, I was more than amused to see WaPo had categorized it as a National Security column rather than Healthcare or Law, and my amusement increased when I saw that it was written by Devlin Barrett. Mr. Barrett is none other than the recipient of Andrew McCabe’s leaks regarding the ongoing investigations by the special counsel and other FBI matters. Take from that what you will.
re: Party activists pile pressure on Corbyn to back second vote Guardian
And I see Tony Blair has popped up again to lobby for a second vote. (Is he a paid lobbyist now?) Given Mr. Blair’s track record, seeing him rally for a second vote sways my opinion of whether holding a second vote is a good idea.
I remain stunned that the portion of the political class in the UK that is not Tory is campaigning for a vote, not the outcome of the vote. Are they planning to lose?
I think they want to give the people of Britain one more chance to redeem themselves by voting the right way. That will make them feel a lot better, irrespective of what actually happens in Brexit.
I am sure that is part of it. Also, I think, some people wondering ‘if May’s deal is really dead, what are we going to do?’
The RT link led me to this article about Hillary attending the wedding in India of some squillionaires kids–do you suppose she got PAID to attend? I can’t think of why else she would go? And Ariana Huffington? John Kerry?
https://www.rt.com/news/446183-isha-ambani-wedding-beyonce/
Hello Hollywood…
Here’s a perfect film for you, and it’s a WW2 saga involving $8 million in buried treasure that we threw into Manila Bay as the Japanese were approaching, and then recovered it under their very eyes, to help undermine the fiat occupation currency system they had set up in the Philippines.
Gresham’s Law in reverse, good money driving out bad?
The Japanese were all about issuing fiat paper money in the countries they occupied, whereas the Nazis issued only coins made out of junk metal.
Almost everything both countries issued is worth precisely bupkis on the marketplace to collectors…
re: Gilets Jaunes
This is a meaningful interview with Édouard Louis (The End of Eddy).
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/to-exist-in-the-eyes-of-others-an-interview-with-the-novelist-edouard-louis-on-the-gilets-jaunes-movement
Great link. Thanks.
Nice to see that the French media are doing their part for the cause-
https://www.rt.com/news/446613-france3-macron-yellow-vests/
Thank you for this link. This is excellent.
Just to underline a few key parts of the Craig Murry story:
And:
On this side of the pond, too, I am sure.
Thanks for the link. It wouldn’t open for me in Firefox, but did open in another browser.
Ditto, but haven’t tried another browser. Thanks for the snippet from his post.
Opened in Opera.
Opera is the browser I use.
” …. walks in the hills.”
What British government figure, speaking out against the Iraq War, resigning …. and, having gone to live in the country, died ‘unexpectedly’ while walking in the local hills?
I remember when this occurred. I was following an anti-war blog at that time and the posts from one of the most articulate and knowledgeable commenters (using a nom de plume) ceased at that time.
Can’t remember which blog (RiverBend?) or the name of the deceased.
David Kelly. See wiki, or this 2013 Guardian report:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jul/16/david-kelly-death-10-years-on
You are probably thinking of David Kelly, though his is not the only suspicious death in this regard.
Robin Cook, resigned from the Cabinet over the war. Slipped hill-walking in Scotland and hit his head.
Thanks, Swamp Yankee. Yes, Robin Cook is the name I could not remember. Supposedly had a heart attack while hill-walking and fell. He was with his wife at the time … and an unidentified hiker came to his aid. His opposition to the war and his subsequent resignation as Foreign Secretary, was a big deal at the time.
Robin Cook dies after collapse on mountain Guardian. Fulsome praise from Blair. And this:
Not that I’m foily…
Paul Ryan pushing for thousands of work visas to be issued to Irish applicants before he leaves office: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/paul-ryan-irish-immigration-bill-backlash-republican-blocking-senate-a8685381.html
He should know better than to be pushing for visas for people from s******e countries: https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish-the-19th-centurys-refugee-crisis
\Wasn’t the ____hole countries thing on the DNC side? Not sure why we would lambast a Republican for the thoughts and feelings of the DNC.
As we pass the Kleenex for the Weekly Standard, Funny guy Jon Schwarz.
https://theintercept.com/2018/12/16/the-10-most-appalling-articles-in-the-weekly-standards-short-and-dreadful-life/
The effort put into the list is phenomenonal. I remember the number one article by David Brooks, but they could have taken the cheap way out and just listed the first 10 results by David Brooks. Jon Schwarz is right. You have to read it because its an experience, and on a personal note, it really shows the depravity of DC elites.
Facebook was using The Weekly Standard for fact-checking. Who will they bring in as a replacement, if such a thing is possible?
InfoWars? Daily Kos? RT?
Further, having just seen this (gookel) toni erdmann
This
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/world/asia/mckinsey-china-russia.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Sullies the ending.
Looks like McKinsey is investing heavily in AI:
https://www.mckinsey.com/about-us/new-at-mckinsey-blog/quantumblack-opens-in-montreal-a-leading-center-of-ai?cid=other-soc-twi-mip-mck-oth-1812&kui=F17gXSzIJar3rzb_L0eePg
Aaron Mate has a nice update/overview of Russiagate and the Mueller probe at the Nation. A lot of useful information is included in response to MSM distortion. I don’t think this has been posted here yet. If so, it’s worth noting again:
https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-russophobia-mueller-trump/
Presumably the fishing expedition has achieved its object with the seizure of Cohen’s files; see, e.g., Andrew McCarthy on the Stormy Daniels matter and campaign finance law (a criminal, not a civil offense, apparently).
There are three kinds of articles on NC.
What Occurred.
What’s actually happening now.
What is going to, may, might, possibly, perchance happen.
Brexit seems to fall into the last category. If you can’t read all of the Links, skip the last category to save/make time
All the Trump stories are in the last category.
It is so very tedious. TDS
Ya know, to throw Yves’ reporting on Brexit (“articles on NC”) into the same bucket as mainstream clickbait on Trump strikes me as a little bit more then “TDS.” Care to clarify?
In any case, if you’re bored, it’s a big Internet. Feel free to find the happiness you seek elsewhere.a
” That moment when Macron’s police try to pepper spray #YellowVests protesters, but the protesters just pepper spray them back”
Make sure you don’t miss that video; it’s exhilarating.
That said, one lesson of the Gilets Jaunes protests, for Americans, is that France has remarkably civilized police. The ones in the video, for instance, didn’t shoot anybody; they just ran. For some reason, they weren’t wearing protective gear. The riots in Paris have been a lot more violent, on both sides, and the cops there are using rubber bullets (visible in the Intercept video from the other day; but we would expect US cops in the same situation to carry out a slaughter. Or maybe they just have us buffaloed.
The same scenario filmed in the USA would end up with Kent State like numbers of dead & wounded among civilians…
The last time I saw cops run away from a situation was during the North Hollywood bank robbery shootout about 20 years ago, and that was because they were outgunned with what they had, compared to the arsenal of the bad guys. They were running to go get better arms @ a nearby sporting good store.
Ben Norton, Grayzone Project: “Every single member in both chambers of the US Congress approved legislation that will impose sanctions and financial restrictions on Nicaragua in an explicit effort to weaken its government.”
Way to go Bernie!
Probably insulting himself from future oppo. It won’t help him. The only way out is through…
Yes. An important story that got no media coverage. Thanks for posting about this.
https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/12/14/congress-sanctions-nicaragua-nica-act/