Dear patient readers,
We are thin on links at our launch time. We should have a full ration by 8:30 AM. Please talk among yourselves and come back later!
Number 10 cat Larry loses collar in ‘most brutal fight yet’ with Foreign Office’s Palmerston Telegraph
Last woolly mammoths ‘died of thirst’ BBC
Russian Anthrax Outbreak Linked to Climate Change Siberian Reindeer
In the Shadow of the DNC, Art About Politics vs. Political Art Hypoallergic (resilc)
Theranos’ New Defense of Its Tech Is Being Called a ‘Bait-and-Switch’ Fortune (EM). Why isn’t Holmes in jail?
Elizabeth Holmes’s First Public Presentation of Theranos Data Falls Short Vanity Fair (resilc)
New diagnostic tool could make detecting Zika cheap and easy The Verge
Brexit
Brexit: Surge in anti-immigrant hate crime in areas that voted to leave EU Independent
More than half a million EU nationals will be forced to leave Britain after Brexit, think tank warns Telegraph. This part will not please the anti-immigrant crowd: “However, of the 3.6 million EU citizens currently living in the UK, more than 80 per cent would have been here for five years and would thereby retain the right to stay.”
Eurocrats’ pensions shape up to be flashpoint in Brexit talks Financial Times
Brexit in the hands of the unbelievers Politico. Important. Confirms what we’ve said about the manpower issues on the UK side, and then some: “Using this vestigial capacity to negotiate the myriad of trade deals that may be required will be like ‘trying to bail an Olympic swimming pool with a thimble,” according to one former trade adviser.. “Be sure to read this section, close to the end: “A post-Brexit relationship could end up sticking closely to the status quo, simply due to bureaucratic inertia.”
Switzerland becomes Brexit casualty Politico. Some readers had claimed the reserve would happen that Switzerland would get its break on immigration, aiding the UK. We had said we thought that was not at all likely.
Greece eases back on capital controls in bid to reverse currency flight Guardian
Germany hits out at Turkish ‘blackmail’ over visas Financial Times. Erdogan clearly has the upper hand. He can send lots of refugees into Europe at will.
Where’s China dumping all of that steel now? MacroBusiness
Syrqaistan
Obama Orders Air Campaign Against ISIS in Libya, Escalating ‘No-Boots War’ Defense One (reslic)
Why Did Russia Send ‘The Terminator’ on a Humanitarian Mission in Syria? Daily Beast (resilc)
Imperial Collapse Watch
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos joins a group led by ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt to advise the Pentagon Business Insider
NATO Spending, in Two Charts: 2016 Edition Defense One (resilc)
2016
Hillary Clinton Will Lose Voters If She Continues To Lie Atlantic
What does the Virulent Hatred of Hillary Clinton Really Mean for Our Democracy in the Long Term? OpEd News. Better than the headline.
Hillary Clinton Campaign Hosting ‘Cybersecurity Fundraiser’ Weekly Standard (Li)
Hackers are putting U.S. election at risk CNN. Bill B: Schneier hyperventilates over alleged Russia hackers, uses CNN as evidentiary standard, ignores tremendous public service of corrupt DNC exposure. CIA-linked Schneier has shown his colors. Establishment sock puppet. The beginning of the end of Tor.
In case you think Blunden is exaggerating, consider:
Mr. Clapper was careful to point out that U.S. intelligence agencies haven’t reached a firm conclusion as to whether Russia or any other country was behind the recent computer breach that stole emails and other records from the Democratic National Committee.
Hillary Clinton Unleashes Her Secret Weapon to Win Over White Men Vanity Fair (resilc)
The Clinton camp is falling into the same trap as Remain Guardian
Selling Past the Close Scott Adams (EM)
Trump: Taking back Crimea would trigger World War III Politico.
The Sordid Ways Death-Penalty States Obtain Execution Drugs Vice (resilc)
SF Landmark, Luxury High-Rise Millennium Tower Is Sinking Fast CBS San Francisco (EM)
Slap-happy surgeon escapes prosecution, now it’s up to the public to judge Syracuse (bob)
Americans’ Economic Gloom Festers as Stocks Hit New High: Gallup Stumped Wolf Richter
Guillotine Watch
Peter Thiel Is Very, Very Interested in Young People’s Blood Inc. In Water Cooler yesterday but a “don’t miss” item. CRT: “Speaking of weird and unsavory, if there’s one thing that really excites Thiel, it’s the prospect of having younger people’s blood transfused into his own veins.”
I’ll let the doctors chime in, but the more Thiel and his buddies get these treatments, the greater the odds of picking up diseases from donors, like Hepatitis C. For instance, as the CDC points out, “If symptoms occur, the average time is 6–7 weeks after exposure, but this can range from 2 weeks to 6 months. However, many people infected with the Hepatitis C virus do not develop symptoms.” I know someone who had Hep C and never used IV drugs; he’s gay and thinks he must have gotten it by using a razor he didn’t clean well enough at a trick’s house. In Australia, tattoos from not-adequately-sanitized needles are responsible for 15-20% of the Hep C infection. Similarly, my father had an extremely bad reaction to a second gamma globulin treatment for his auto-immune disease that led to his suicide (among other things, ulcers in his mouth so he could not eat and rapidly lost 25% of his body weight; he was then put on prednisone, a powerful steroid that most users hate taking; he also developed skin rashes so be that he found it impossible to sleep.). I wondered if there was a problem with the batch of gamma globulin itself or whether getting products made from other people’s blood can produce bad reactions over time in some patients. So I have a sneaking suspicion that Thiel’s plan might not work out as he envisages.
Class Warfare
The college debt crisis is even worse than you think Boston Globe. Lambert linked to this in Water Cooler, but wanted to make sure you didn’t miss it.
The Financial Firm That Cornered the Market on Jails Nation (resilc)
Antidote du jour (furzy):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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Comments are closed.
takes a lot for me to wonder WHERE AM I
:)
So, the mainstream media has dusted off the ole fainting couch, as last night the Khans made their rounds. Chris Matthews made sure they were properly fitted with pearls to suit the occasion.
I don’t particularly agree with Donald Trump going after the Khans from a strategic standpoint, but that’s what he does (ref, Rosie O’Donnell). Trump is NOT politically correct. And when Khan got up in front of the Clinton pep rally, yelling at Trump and brandishing the constitution, to me he’s fair game in terms of a rebuttal. So spare me the pearl clutching.
On the other hand. When you step onto the stage and open fire – you make yourself into a legitimate target. Clinton likely suspected that Trump would snatch at the bait. She is using the Khans, Trump is just the victim of his ego.
This may be why Trump is not embraced by other billionaires.
“Just do it, but don’t make a mess” – chapter 1 of Dummies Guide to Acting Like a Overlord. If you are a baron, talk and act like a baron. If you are a duke, talk and act like a duke.
Hillary wins another round of “Showing Your Blue Blood Upbringing” Political Correctness. Even Warren Buffet is feeling uncomfortable, sensing decency has been ignored (not sure about losing jobs, all the outsourcing, all that wealth inequality…Is there any decency in those? Have you no decency?)
If only Trump had responded it differently, phrased it to highlight another issue, etc…
At this point I’m having serious doubts that Mr. Trump’s actions are “strategic.”
I saw that Warren Buffet wanted to compare tax returns
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/warren-buffett-challenges-trump-release-taxes-n621336
with Trump and that’s great and all but isn’t he at least a little curious about the transcripts???
Hillary Clinton has been looking into releasing her transcripts for paid speeches to Wall St. and other special interests for
179 days 11 hours 28 minutes 16 seconds
http://iwilllookintoit.com/
or will this site be up for ad infinitum?
Easy response.
Buffett is not running for pres, Hillary is. I will release my returns when she releases her transcripts.
Buffett gets credit for saying rich taxes too low and profits too high, but he’s never supported Bernie, he’s no progressive. He loaned money to ge and Goldman knowing the fix was in… Supporting Hillary is just supporting his book, same as all the other elites.
Concur.
Rightwinger sites are now saying that Khan, a longtime DC lawyer, has some sort of ties to Saudi Arabia as well as the Clinton Foundation.
There is a bit of justice to the notion that if you live by the sword of a shallow medium like cable news then one shouldn’t complain too loudly when they turn on you with off the wall attacks. After all Trump is often pretty off the wall himself. Time to get substantive and make that “pivot”? Maybe?….someday?…..
The public know we are screwed and pour all their hopes into any vehicle of change. The fact that the Trump campaign bumps along in spite of everything is evidence of this.
A friend has wondered lately how Mr. Khan and his wife found their way to that dnc podium.
Your comment intrigued me, so I decided to to a little investigatin’.
At the time of his son’s death in 2004, Khan was a lawyer in the d. c. firm Hogan & Hartson. After a 2010 merger with a London-based law firm, it is currently know as Hogan Lovells.
As a Muslim immigrant and colleague, the death of Khan’s son in 2004 was mourned by the lawyers of his firm.
In 2002, another (in)famous lawyer joined Hogan & Hartson as a partner in the Litigation Practice Group by the name of…….. Loretta Lynch. She left the firm in 2010 to return to “public service.”
Hogan Lovells is registered to lobby for saudi arabia through 2016. Kahn now runs his own law office specializing in “immigration issues.”
I guess neither could be expected to consider a Trump presidency a good thing.
Fantastic work Katniss++
And That’s the Way it Is.
For some, the more they know about Hillary, the less likely they want to vote for her.
For others, it’s love-of-voting-against-her at first sight.
Here is an interesting take on Khan’s speech, the “constitutionality” issues it raises and its democratic “embrace.”
It includes a very interesting comparison to the “white-hot” controversy caused by Cindy Sheehan’s public agony for the death of her son more than a decade ago, and her ANTI-WAR stance against george w. bush.
Sheehan’s son Casey was also killed in 2004. The two soldiers were killed 65 days apart.
Sheehan became a media sensation when she attacked President George W. Bush over the war. Opponents of the war immediately took up her cause in their protests, and Sheehan became, for a while, ubiquitous in media reports of opposition to Bush and the war.
Food for thought.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-khizr-khan-donald-trump-and-the-debate-over-muslim-immigration/article/2598232
If you haven’t yet seen it, check out the link to Cindy Sheehan’s own statement on the Khan vs Trump hot mess which I posted to 2PMWC late yesterday. The kind of thing sure to threaten to make many Dem tribalist’s heads explode.
Cindy Sheehan’s Statement on Trump vs. Khan
You are a star, Katniss!
Katniss Everdeen
August 2, 2016 at 10:54 am
Nice work Katniss!
Now a cynic, and we know nothing is worse than cynicism,might wonder how much of a big deal was made of this death when it occurred – when Bush was president….
I mean, in 2004 dems thought dying in Iraq was a noble and patriotic thing?
I think so much of the “heroization” of soldiers is a pretty transparent ploy to try and equate any criticism of the war with criticism of the soldiers who fight it. If the person making the sacrifice is so noble, how can a noble person possibly be involved in a bad undertaking?
What would happen if people understood the sacrifice was completely in vain, and indeed, made the situation worse? Better to concentrate on the nobility of soldiers, and not the “cause.”
FWIW, I submitted this in yesterday’s links, but very late.
From Katniss Everdeen:
” As undeniably tragic as the Khan story is, Mr Khan should consider carefully the policies for which he is advocating.”
I’m pretty sure Mr. Kahn already has given careful consideration to his policies. He’s actually written about his position on Islamic Jurisprudence and Sharia at some length.
My ears perked up when I read that Khan was a Harvard lawyer, so I tried to find out about his bio. (I do that with international figures ever since Sakashvili). General bios indicate that he migrated from Pakistan to Dubai, and then came to America by getting himself into Harvard law school. This site, however, provides additonal detail (despite the breathless tenor):
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/20/08/is_there_a_backstory_about_khizr_khan_and_donald_trump.html
At the very least, Mr. Khan seems to be quite well-connected with Islamic elites; Said Ramadan (Tariq Ramadan’s father) is indeed a pioneer of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement, and Mr. Khan seems to be involved in the movement himself. For some time, I would have thought that interest like Mr. Khan’s in Sharia law should be regarded as benign. That was before I became aware of a confidential document of the Brotherhood, the Explanatory Memorandum uncovered by the FBI. There’s an infamous section:
“The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Proecess” with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack. But, would the slackers and the Mujahedeen be equal.”
Don’t know about anyone else, but no one with close connections to the Ikhwan (i.e., Brotherhood) gives me warm & fuzzies anymore. At the very least, there’s more to Mr. Kahn’s background than just a simple immigrant trying to make a go of it in America. Whatever his background, he’s quite a larger fish than he appeared to be at first sight.
My sympathies are with Mr. Khan and his family for his son’s death. I’ll reserve my judgment on other matters.
Having said the above, I’m greatly heartened by the show of sympathy of French Muslims regarding the incidents in their country, especially regarding the murder of Father Jacques Hamel.
These moderates performed this act at likely social and personal risk to themselves. Some schools of Islam consider such an act haram.
I do hope that we will see more of such acts of compassion and bravery, and that they succeed in uniting all of good will in mutual respect.
If one were to be cynical, and I am, one might consider that Western-friendly Muslims would serve a purpose to those who are not so friendly towards the West.
they also serve a purpose for those in the west that aren’t so friendly to muslims.
I’m getting a bad feeling about all of this. Actually I’m getting a really bad feeling about all of this because I was already worried, like you, when I saw the Harvard lawyer connection.
There is no doubt in my mind that there is a link between all these things: Obama, Clinton, Syria, Libya, Israel, Saudi Arabia, “moderate(?)” and “immoderate(??)” Islamic terrorists, Wall street, domestic war on the non-elite US population, and now this fucking Khan prick.
Indeed. Where is James T. Kirk when we need him the most?
Last I heard, he set out on a voyage to an exotic destination somewhere or other; his crew supposedly included Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew. (Alan Dershowitz stayed behind.) But all that might just be rumor;-)
Don’t forget Gulen and Turkey. As to your observation that TPTB & MSM do not seem to be talking about this, there may be chains of control of a different nature involving both domestic and foreign agencies and interests.
For example, Sibel Edmonds spoke on a panel focused on the extent of blackmail and corruption of Dennis Hastert involving pedophilia. She reported it to authorities in 2004, 2005 and 2006. There was a major Vanity Fair expose of Hastert in 2005 which was triple fact-checked before publication. The public continues to ignore this. The upper levels of law enforcement know all about it but do nothing. Presumably it is widespread and allows for politicials / judges / officials who can be controlled.
There’s an excellent article by Cynthia McKinney (“Why is FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Boiling Over Former Speaker Hastert’s Plea Deal“)
In a 2015 post Edmonds says,
So–there can be many reasons for “immunity” and “untouchable status”. When Hastert resigned the MSM only mentioned his financial improprieties–but no one dared mention that it linked to illegal activities of the most unsavory kind, all recorded and monitored by the CIA, FBI, DoJ, criminal groups and foreign agencies.
“The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Proecess” with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack. But, would the slackers and the Mujahedeen be equal.”
This is seriously concerning. Also, I note I forgot to add the TTP, TTIP, and TISA in my earlier list.
Not a fan of the Brotherhood, but this reminds me somewhat of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. What is the provenance of this document?
Fear, uncertainty and doubt…
Elmer “FUD”D..
Nobody knows anything for sure, now do they? So easy to spin us around and kick us down the stairs…
You’re a bit too elliptical for me there.
This page has a little info. Not confidence inspiring.
nice comparison.
Grebo:
It’s easy enough to google. Here’s a link to the document
http://coop.txnd.uscourts.gov/judges/hlf2/09-25-08/Elbarasse%20Search%203.pdf,
FWIW, there’s a trial number presented on the first page.
Here’s a discussion of it in the Dallas News:
http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2009/05/smoking-gun-holy-land-foundati.html/
Unsurprisingly, most available information is from sources which are not enamored of Islam for whatever reason, so don’t expect to find this closely reported in the Atlantic or WaPO. But the document itself seems to be consistent and undisputed across sources. I first learned about this issue reading about the Holy Land Foundation trial, which IS well-documented.
Here are some links to this controversial trial in which it appeared as evidence:
http://archive.adl.org/nr/exeres/83323767-981c-4e4d-9b77-70dd604d2d75,db7611a2-02cd-43af-8147-649e26813571,frameless.html
http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2009/05/smoking-gun-holy-land-foundati.html/
The site:
http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/muslim_brotherhood_document1
tries to discredit the document and smears its publicizers, but nowhere disputes the fact that it was introduced as evidence, nor despite trying to cast doubt on its authenticity, never addresses the point that its validity was unchallenged during the trial. Although the article attempts to minimize the Muslim Brotherhood as a political force in present-day affairs, this now sounds unconvincing after Muslim Brother Morsi’s escapades in Egypt before he was deposed by al-Sisi.
I came across this issue viewing some youtube videos by whistleblower Steven Couglin, and later found another government analyst name Philip Haney. Both have written books expressing concern over Brotherhood activity in America, and officialdom’s incurious behavior. I find Couglin’s difficult, Haney’s a bit light, but both worthwhile reading.
I hope that satisfies your concerns re authenticity. By all means, if you find evidence that the doc is not as claimed, please let me know; it will greatly relieve my concerns.
Thanks, my googling only revealed conspiracy theorists or bare copies of the doc.
The doc was found in 2004 by the FBI in the house of a MB member while they were investigating a muslim charity that had sent money to Hamas.
It seems to be genuine, written in 1991, but appears to be a suggestion from a member to the leadership rather than the other way round. The list of organisations in it is a wish list of potential collaborators. The english translation in the pdf is by the US government.
The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood was inspired to it by his stay in the US. The Power of Nightmares covers it. Highly recommended if you haven’t seen it.
My contrarian son (I had been a US draft-card burner in the 60s) joined the NZ Army aged 17. As a parent, I was fully aware of the danger posed to his Immortal Soul by his service. Thank God, he was thrown out of the Army 3 years later. Now he has two cute kids and a wife to love. He will be productively occupied for the next 15 years at least.
I never celebrated my son’s time in the Army. If they had gotten him killed, I would have been furious at the Army/Politicians who had murdered my little boy.
In my opinion, the Khans are cynically using the death of their (darling?) child to progress the Sunni war against the Shiites.
Bastards
The khans became americans when they let their son cross the Rubicon into american mainstream life…daddy Khan is correct in pointing out no one from the trump family has ever, it seems, ever given five seconds of military service, despite the fact the family came over from Germany about 115 years ago…all those years, all those wars, and no trump has worried about a stray bullet…
Being trained to kill, and being legally able to kill other humans is not, in itself, something to necessarily celebrate. You just reinforce the idea of Donald Trump as the Peace Candidate.
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/is-trump-the-peace-candidate-2/
This is Pat Buchanan
“Is Trump the Peace Candidate?”
Thanks
The nonstop 24-7 coverage of this affair, as well as the Trump’s-best-friend-is-the-new-Hitler-aka-Putin, has served to bury the real issues important to the public: income inequality, political subservience to financial interests, the insatiable appetite of our foreign policy elites for evermore wars of choice, etc., etc.
I have never seen anything like this media feeding frenzy. I thought long ago that I had lost my sense of awe and amazement at the media’s complicity in promoting silence and acquiescence to a corrupt and evil status-quo, but I guess not.
Our famously free press is united in its condemnation of the most insane, evil man in the world, Emmanuel Goldstein.
A comment worthy of being spread far and wide.
Any person, of any religion or none, who willingly joins in an illegal war of conquest on behalf of the United States is a misguided fool.
If he is killed in that war, his life was wasted on behalf of fat, waddling rich men like Henry Kissinger, who describes soldiers as “dumb beasts.” Captain Humayun died for somebody’s bank account, whatever he thought he was accomplishing.
I’ve never seen a serious auto accident. I have seen several young men spread all over the jungle by a single artillery round. They each went home in a sealed casket; only God knows whose pieces and parts were in each casket. There was no way to tell what was who.
The net result of that one shell: a very heavy tax on their survivors back home, and a slew of orders from the Pentagon to various factories for a replacement artillery shell, and four complete sets of combat gear — boots, buckles, rifles, field rations, new recruits to fill this equipment — many thousands of dollars went into making that moment of horror that made the hamburger that is war. The dead did not profit; the rich did.
Powerful stuff Antifa. Thanks for sharing.
Antifa
August 2, 2016 at 10:33 am
One thing that occurs to me, that as our military has become “professional” and “volunteer” and group think and indoctrination into “honor” means that those who fight the wars are put in a position of never being able to oppose any war they are assigned to. Furthermore, any criticism of the war is equated with criticism of the soldiers.
We are told to oppose the war is to oppose our brave soldiers – when supporting soldiers mean only asking their sacrifice in the most perilous of circumstances.
That whole volunteer culture, cult of honor and sacrifice, and worship of the troops makes it a much harder for young men to come all the way back from war. After Vietnam, where the operating motto was “F@#K the Army” (FTA), a grunt could come home, grow his hair long, go to college on the government’s dime, protest, smoke weed, hang out with college kids and folk singers, raise a ruckus, march and protest, throw their medals over the White House fence, hear weepy apologies from their parents for not sending them to Canada when they had the chance, and generally slide right into the counterculture.
Or, they could stuff it all down deep, marry the girl who waited for them, drink a lot, and sell life insurance until they were 65. Like nothing ever happened.
Nowadays they have to carry this whole machismo volunteer super soldier persona around for years, if not decades, and if they do ever give it up, it’s a rejection of their internal identity as a hero, a soldier, someone worthy of praise just for walking down the street. First stage in finding a new identity is to feel lost and empty. That makes room to build a new you.
But it’s no fun being empty and lost.
So it’s much harder for a lifer, or a genuine volunteer. They believed in the military like a religion. It’s hard to describe how lost they feel when they know it was and is a lie.
Damn sure, guys who came back from Vietnam were never killing themselves at the rate of 22 every day, like now. And the suicides aren’t just among the guys who deployed, either. It’s also among guys who pinned their self identity on being some kind of Rambo, and it never happened for them. On the day you take off that uniform, you’re an unemployed, homeless, unstable person who doesn’t fit in anywhere in the civilian world. And you don’t count as special no matter how hard you worked, no matter what you gave up to try to be a permanent hero.
Any decent career counselor would direct you to become a prison guard, a cop, or a mercenary for whoever’s hiring. And there you are back in the shit again.
That makes so much sense.
There is great truth and great sadness in what you write. Thanks, but too bad you had to experience it.
on one level or another, we are all experiencing it.
i think that’s partly why antifa wrote it.
thanks.
I’ve never seen/heard it said better.
Antifa
August 2, 2016 at 12:38 pm
Very insightful, Antifa
Well written, and even more so that it comes from personal experience.
Stupid Khan BS, stupid political culture where we are supposed to be manipulated endlessly by pressing of emotional buttons (they must believe someone is falling for it), stupid Hillary campaign about nothing – she can’t run on the issues like Sanders actually could – so she runs on big fat nothing like this, stupid ahistorical de-contextualized culture that doesn’t even remember the war he died in, the second Iraq war that is, was an unmitigated disaster.
Just adding to the chorus that your two posts above paint a very clear picture. Thanks.
Concur Antifa….
Disheveled Marsupial…. I wandered for decades…
I have lost the religion of my birth. It was painful, brutal and unwanted. And what you write is not a metaphor.
Many willingly join because the war on poverty has been a resounding failure and it’s the best chance they have to climb a rung on the economic ladder. Not everyone has a mommy and daddy that can send them to college so they can experience financial; success(nor do they wish to take out loans that will span years that may or may not yield a decent job.)
That probably isn’t the case when it comes to Khan’s son but it is the case in many instances for children born HERE, in the good ol’ USA.
Yes likely sad but true, parents that are able to in any conceivable way should raise their children never ever ever ever to join the military though, of that I am convinced. Good parents (who aren’t mired in deep poverty ok fair enough) keep their children from the maws of the war machine.
“We grease the wheels of the war machine and feed it with our babies.”
We need a public service alternative that lets young people do work like teaching, and then get something like what the GI Bill gave WWII vets: a real start in life, with choices for work right out of high school besides the army. Kids should have more choices; helping professions should be respected; there need to be real options for people starting out in life.
Arthur Silber often talks about the movie the Americanization of Emily. That’s what these silly Khan fools remind me of, donning their widows (or mothers) weeds. Fools all of them.
“I don’t trust people who make bitter reflections about war. … It’s always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a Hell it is. And it’s always the widows who lead the Memorial Day parades … we shall never end wars … by blaming it on ministers and generals or warmongering imperialists or all the other banal bogies. It’s the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers; the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widows’ weeds like nuns and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices. My brother died at Anzio – an everyday soldier’s death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud.
[Y]ou see, now my other brother can’t wait to reach enlistment age. That’ll be in September. May be ministers and generals who blunder us into wars, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution. What has my mother got for pretending bravery was admirable? She’s under constant sedation and terrified she may wake up one morning and find her last son has run off to be brave.”
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/05/against-annihilation-of-spirit-let-us.html
This is really powerful.
Very apt comment. Anyone who willingly goes to fight in an illegal war is asking to become cannon fodder. Only the rich crooks gain in a war.
I don’t why the media is getting their panties twisted in a bunch. From what I heard Trump said that Khan appears to be a kind man…and that his wife stood still and was perhaps not allowed to talk. In many cultures women are asked to remain quiet in situations like this. What’s so bad about pointing that out? I guess I don’t understand what the fuss is all about.
Information unearthed by Breitbart (from a simple Google search no less) proves that Khan is a “ringer” having many ties to the Clintons. I guess investigative reporting by the MSM is eschewed when propaganda is so easily distributed by the puppet masters.
Skynet flagged this comment and I’m approving it only as an object lesson. This comment is low value add:
1) Because Brietbart, just like TPM and for the same reasons, is a low value-add source
2) There is no “proves” because you do not actually share what the “many ties” are, even without a link
3) Hence what we have here is a drive-by that’s purely an appeal to authority (both Brietbart and your own)
Don’t do that. There are plenty of other places on the net that encourage this.
NOTE In general, since Google search is now so crapified, I’m quite leery of “a simple Google search.” Merciful heavens.
Just now reading this and I also linked up what is probably the same Breitbart story in the Cooler…now in moderation and likely to stay there, sounds like. No Google on my part….my brother sent to me.
But given the MSM blackout on all info contrary to their current unified front is it really illegitimate to at least discuss stories from other sources while bearing in mind the usual caveats?
While I don’t watch much tv my brother says cable is flogging this Khan story ceaselessly. It does seem to be worth discussing.
Did you read at what I wrote? Where did I sat not “worth discusssing”? It’s really not up-to-scratch to dump a vague reference to some story or other into the comments, and then do some handwaving about a Google search.
If the commenter had really wanted to add some value, he could have done what I did elsewhere on the thread: Verify the Breitbart story in the Wayback machine, then take a screen dump so readers can make a judgment about what’s going on from the original source.
I’m amazed I even have to say this stuff.
Not trying to put words in your mouth, just asking whether certain websites are off limits for linking. I see you have put my comment through over on the Water Cooler so I guess the answer to that is no. Speaking for myself I always try to include links to quoted material.
Holy time displacement, Batman!
BTW, the Downing-street-catfight link is awesome – and here we thought US politics was nasty…
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos joins a group led by ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt to advise the Pentagon
But Bezos and Schmidt are just two members of a disruptive Dream Team:
With Best and the Brightest innovators like these, surely we will vector to victory, Viktor.
The “original” ‘best and brightest’ strove to slay the Commie Dragon in Vietnam. How well did that work out?
As for Links doing the time warp, well, it’s about time Yves got some quality sleep.
ambrit,
It worked out with the peace accords signed in Paris and the US leaving. It was the Democratically controlled US Congress that refused financial support for South Vietnam (in January 1975) that allowed North Vietnamese to conquer the South. I
well the whole war was a vast waste of humanity that demolished a country. should congress have continued to fund it, so more people could die?
We have clearance, Clarence.
Ah yes, those that have never served, have never been within a hemisphere with war and combat jumping in to “advise” the combatants.
I’ll take what they have to say with more than a grain of salt only AFTER they are handed an M4 rifle, a helmet, and stuck into a Hummer to go on patrol in some active war zone. AFTER they have seen actual combat, being shot and shooting back, shitting their pants in fear that at any moment their vehicle will pass near an IED and see their “marvelous brains” shredded by shockwave-induced traumatic brain injury. That is the only way anything they have to say has any value whatsoever.
Did you join of your own free will?
Every kid I know who joined (especially in the past 10-15 years) did so because of the educational/tech training, or the bennies, which are order of magnitude better than anything available in the civilian world.
And admit the truth. 90% of “veterans” never come within artillery range of combat. I know guys who spent 20 years in the USAF or USN, never went overseas, and have fewer days of TDY than I do as a civilian aircraft mechanic.
I’ll recognize the “tip of the spear” guys, like my uncle who was in the 101st Airborne in Korea and Vietnam. But I wouldn’t let him make policy. Like most lifers I know, his answer for everything was “bomb em back to the Stone Age”.
Which is why Republicans love the military, and visa versa. Their worldviews are alike.
Your 90% number is NOT the situation we have today.
Heck even in the 90s my spouse had an op tempo of 75%. That meant he spent more time away from home than he actually did at home. We actually left because what he was being offered was Guam or Diego Garcia unaccompanied(leaving me to care for 4 babies on my own.)
Today’s soldier sacrifices FAMILY by being sent all over the place to police the world and none of the ones I talk to particularly like it.
I also think your worldview is antiquated because many soldiers, as the result of actually seeing war up close, oppose it and just want to come home.
I’ve been to Diego Garcia. Loved it, but then I was single. It was like being on Gilligan’s Island (of a sort).
Guam…been there too. Another nice place to be. Too bad it wasn’t offered as accompanied so you could go too. It was like a Hawaii vacation spot for Japanese tourists, at least at the time I was there. Nice beaches, nice water, good scuba diving.
I did join of my own free will but it didn’t hurt that it also paid for my college so I didn’t have to rack up (admittedly tiny, back then) student debt. Me and my younger brother were going at the same time and we followed a couple older sisters. My parents were getting bogged down with student loans, etc, to get us through.
I was going to join the military one way or another. The scholarship I was awarded made it happen sooner. Then I ended up with GI Bill AFTER I served. That helped get me through some advanced prep courses before I went off to grad school (Biochemistry).
Oh, and I was “tip of the spear”. A direct combatant. I wouldn’t have served at all if I wasn’t going to be the spear. I HATE desk jockeying. It’s simply not for me. It is necessary, along with all the logistical support, etc, but there are people who are willing and able to do that so I never had to.
It’s almost today doc! Thanks Yves for the preview!
Atlantic error correction: Clinton will keep losing more voters if she keeps lying.
The Atlantic piece starts out by exclaiming that HRC had a successful convention. I guess, if you simply ignore all the Bernie delegates, sweep them under the rug, act like they don’t exist. Some were demonstrating vehemently against Hill. One lady had a sign exclaiming “Hillary sucks ass.” The Atlantic is participating in the big lie by saying the only thing that matters is the official story, and the official story is the propaganda put out by The Atlantic and its ilk. The official videos of the official convention speakers are shot by the official TV networks. But unofficially, a lot of people hate Hillary Clinton and would not vote for her as dog catcher, and that was demonstrated in Philly.
i would fear for the welfare of the dogs.
Sold to highest bidder, preferably accredited testing facilities
A thermodynamic metaphor: A lot of energy was expended at the DNC draining heat out of the arena. It takes energy to tear a sign out of someones hands.
Clinton wins if less people vote. That’s putting agents out to act as coolers, in the poker sense. They can do this two ways I can think of. One is convincing people they don’t have to worry about her (the ‘reintroduce’ strategy). The other is the Invincible strategy- Your Vote Doesn’t Count. MSM is trying to do both.
But the rate of reactions are temperature dependent. It takes more energy to get over the hump to a major change. And every time they say Trump is the agent of Putin, or show his wife’s boobs, they increase the temperature of the system.
They cannot attack Trump without getting hot reactions. And hot reactions benefit Trump.
As you note, this article is built on a lie. It’s really about the cognitive dissonance of the author speaking to other ambivalent Hillary supporters: “Hillary, please stop telling arrant lies; it disturbs my emotions and you’re much to clever for that.”
A metric? I followed many DKos members to the sub-reddit: Kossacks for Sanders. Early on, one blogger mentions Quantcast.com as a way to observe if in fact DKos did take a hit. And yes it did. The Kossack site now includes a lot of what I now view as similar to alt-right CT sites.
I took a look yesterday at Quantcast and the numbers for unique views and visits has increased from the high 7’s / low-middle 8’s. to >12 M .
I don’t manage a website so someone who knows more than me ( which probably is that hard) if those traffic numbers are really significant and could the numbers be faked.
A single metric is no way to measure, I get that and I get that people are unhappy with HRC…but dragging a dead cat around and complaining – well it is getting to sound like a bit immature.
The official story…her triumph….her will.
Please stop lying so you can become our next President. Oh boy…….
I guess Lambert would say this is wonderfully clarifying. Yuck.
If Hillary tells the truth, she would drop even faster in our race to the bottom.
She has been at this 18 years, just running for President (the Senate thing was because no one would rightfully take her seriously as first lady with no discernible vision or platform), I wonder if she even has a grasp on a realistic world view instead relying on a twisted 90’s view of politics that was so successful we saw the rise of the Republican Congress and Shrub.
Well, they have announced the dates of the debates. BTW, who is “they”? What organization controls the debates? Looks like the VP debate will be on the dem candidate’s home turf in VA. As Trump intimated, two of the prez debates will be airing at pro football times. You could say the last debate, in Lost Wages, NV, is more or less on The Donald’s home turf, and it’s not opposite a football game. First debate is Sept. 26.
American political debates are stupid. The election is being won and loss by organizing efforts today. Are the Republican block captains working for Trump? They worked for Mittens, and they hated Mittens who had 61 million votes and was fairly close in the right states to win. It’s not the advertising or salaries for strategists on cable news. It’s these people who deliver. They can be slick. They keep track of kids who might be sympathizers and who isn’t for when they turn 18. The GOP is a minority party naturally kept alive because the Democrats want to be a GOP with a few more token awards. A generic Democrat might have 300 votes and would pull serious House pickups, not to mention the Senate which Team Blue might not take because they picked Hillary.
On the Democratic side, is there a Democratic Party anymore? I know there is a Clinton fan club, but the party is relying on youth and urban voters (I.e. renters and students who move) to turn out. Who is registering them? It’s been four years since the last drive. Sanders has been the only registration effort of any note. I’ve seen a few registration volunteers (the Democrats are hiding; I always wore stickers) at the Charlottesville Downtown Mall which is one of the whitest places in America, and I spoke to one who said I was the only nice person and then wouldn’t shut up.
The debates are a sideshow for the fan clubs. The “undecideds” who watch are watching for dog whistles for their tribal identity they don’t want to admit to.
But even the venerable Yves has predicted that this year’s debates will be different, akin to a sporting event in viewership.
I agree just as the debates in the primaries for both parties did not hew to the usual in regards to everything, this is another where the reaction will be unknown.
The Republicans had two anomalies. The first being viewership went through the roof. The second was shared with the Democrats. The initial reactions that viewers had regarding the winners did not switch when the usual spokespersons pretending to be neutral observers put their fingers on the scales in order to change their minds. This was not the traditional where you could see that original viewers went X won and within twenty four hours the public aligned with the media PTB. Nope, the public pretty consistently picked Trump and Sanders.
The only debate likely to be the useless politics as usual type is the Vice Presidential one. The others will be uncharted territory. We know a few things.
Hillary is dependent on preparation, she doesn’t think well on her feet in this venue, and it is not a good showcase for her personality. Trump is light on his feet, changes direction on a dime, and has an instinctive feel for the audience (both present and over the air), facts are not his long suit. He is also goes after his opponents.
Lots of things lined up to allow Hillary Clinton to win the senate seat in NY originally. Most lucky being Giuliani’s health issues. But second most was Lazio going after her in the debate by visually menacing her physically trying to get her to sign a pledge (and then going on vacation over labor day and just not campaigning). This is going to be the big test. Trump won’t physically menace Clinton, but you know they are going to try to portray his usual style as menacing. Whether this remains a ‘winner’ for Clinton or not, it is only one factor in why this is not the usual debate scenario we have seen in recent years.
The high number of Democrats with standing to win statewide was a factor. If there was only one or two Democrats ready to win statewide, there would have been an anti-carpetbagger candidate instead there was a snow white and seven dwarfs phenomenon which was Jeb’s strategy and why he had no many sheep dogs.
She wouldn’t be able to pull off a win in Arkansas.
Quite so: Hillary’s New York Senate seat was just a convenient perch for maintaining her political network, while biding her time for a run at a bigger prize.
Ever since New York elected this midwestern carpetbagger who moved in and took a “listening tour” of upstate counties she’d never seen in her life, it’s been known as the Doormat State in place of the Empire State.
With the doormat’s electoral votes in safe D-party hands, it can be tossed into the rubbish bin.
Upstate NY Dems knew enough about Clinton to go solidly for Sanders. The party just needed to defraud their voters around NYC to win.
Yeah, that was quite the spin cycle she tried to launder the email hairball in, and she was awarded the maximum FOUR PINOCCHIOS (!) for Her efforts.
That said, this too shall pass, for we have a sizeable portion of the electorate that doesn’t mind being lied to, so long as you’re politically correct in doing so.
………..for we have a sizeable portion of the electorate that doesn’t mind being lied to, so long as you’re politically correct in doing so.
And as long as you have a lot of “experience” in doing so.
Shorter him: stop lying because Trump is scary. But if that’s what you believe then wouldn’t that be the very reason why you should lie? In an ends justify the means world what’s a mere lie?
What he’s really saying is stop lying because you will be caught. The fact that Hillary has a need to lie doesn’t seem to bother him too much.
Shorter us: stop reading The Atlantic…..
And people have short memories. It was right up there with Sarah Palin’s reaction to the ethics violations charges investigations in Alaska. Both pointedly ignored the really big sections where all the reasons they should have been sanctioned or indicted were listed. And then took victory tours of how they were so innocent.
The Atlantic piece by poor Ron Fournier with his ethical undies in a bundle. The modus operandi of the Clintons is to take advantage of any gray area, especially if it involves money or power. When I worked for lawyers I found out that a conflict of interest is only a conflict of interest if the bar association is breathing down your neck and threatening disbarment (which evenutally happened to Bill, consort and sexual predator).
The lying is not exactly a new phenomenon:
The famous cattle futures:
http://www.businessinsider.com/clinton-futures-scandal-still-relevant-today-2016-2
Martha Stewart, the only perp caught up in the recent financial scandals, went to jail for less than that. I guess that the rule is Don’t Write Cookbooks.
I hardly believe that is why Clinton brought up her taxes so much with Sanders and Trump (more to come surely). I bet they found some super clever gray area and shifty lawyers to doctor their fraud and tie it up with a bow. Now they want to show it off and make the payoff worthwhile.
Problem is no one outside of their fan club gives a rat’s ass. “Look at how great we are! LOOK!”
Follow up interview with Fournier:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/08/02/fournier_i_have_literally_had_clinton_staffers_tell_me_that_trust_doesnt_matter.html
“Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.”
– Karl Marx
I thought this was just a metaphor.
:)
More frightening than hep c as far as blood transfusions, would be a mad cow type protein/prion.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17317213
sorry most uptodate studies are paywalled
here you go risks of blood transfusions.
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1389957-overview
Well I guess it would be fine for most of the elites then because they are already pathologically insane. How much worse could they get? Maybe a mad-cow-like disease would serve to rip off that microscopically thin veneer of civility that they have somehow used to shield themselves from the consequences of their actions for so long.
I was living in London when bovine spongiform encephalopathy first spread to humans in the UK… which coincided with Thatcher’s demolishing the working classes. There was a star-studded “special” on TV to bring attention to it and raise money for those left out in the cold. Stephen Fry had the greatest line of the evening:
“What do you say to a dead cow?
Can I have my job back, Margaret?”
I believe that vampires, as immortals, are immune to Mad Cow Disease and Hep C. I think it is a great idea for the monied elite to get transfusions of young people’s blood. They could make young people’s blood smoothies to drink it as well. With kale of course.
Inability to inactivate prions – No known procedure that can be used with human blood or plasma has been shown to inactivate prions, the abnormally folded proteins that are associated with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) or variant CJD (vCJD). Governmental regulators in the United States and other countries have adopted a conservative position with regard to vCJD transmission in which individuals with potential exposure to prion diseases are not used as donors. (See “Blood donor screening: Medical history”, section on ‘Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease’ and “Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease”, section on ‘Transfusion-related vCJD’.)
The same way hemophiliacs & gays could not donate, now if you had a cheeseburger in the UK 80-90s you cannot donate. There is some concern it is here but we don’t test, in pet food, venison, elk….makes me want to be a vegetarian. But I have already had too many cheeseburgers.
The Peter Thiel thing is just creepy. What is it with these billionaires and their ghoulish craving for immortality (Larry Ellison, too)? They can never get enough. Makes me think of Hyman Roth in “The Godfather”: He thinks he’s going to live forever…
OK here’s my take: These are seriously psychologically ill people. They are probably a little smarter than average (let’s say two standard deviations above average), and have stumbled into huge wealth. They are obsessed with validating themselves, as they perceive this as the solution to the fact that they can sense huge amounts of insecurity/instability in their subconscious mind, but refuse to acknowledge it as their lives consist of contradictions that are impossible to psychologically resolve.
Yeah, there is something unsettling and ‘off’ about it, to me.
They are so smart that they have to a duty to live forever.
“The world needs me always.”
The fact is that the world is fucked up, and growing up in it twists each of us in our own peculiar ways, from the poorest pauper to the richest of the rich. In that sense we are all equal, and on a level playing field. Where is joy, and peace of mind? The rich have no monopoly on it, just as the poor have none on misery.
Yeah I totally agree. I have noticed that once people discard an ethical outlook in the service of personal gain they seem to either become and stay miserable, or totally spin out of control and just become more and more evil. Also, it has been noted before, but I forget by who, that unethical people cannot bear to spend time with ethical people, they just end up irrationally despising those who refuse to accept that spreading entropic negative externalities in service of personal gain is ok.
I use the word entropic as I expect there will always be some degree of conflict in life, yet they don’t have to cause permanent and irrepairable damage, especially if one is willing to admit one is in the wrong once in a while.
MikeNY
August 2, 2016 at 7:13 am
fresno dan
August 1, 2016 at 3:45 pm
“There are widespread rumors in Silicon Valley, where life-extension science is a popular obsession, that various wealthy individuals from the tech world have already begun practicing parabiosis, spending tens of thousands of dollars for the procedures and young-person-blood, and repeating the exercise several times a year. In our April 2015 interview, Thiel was seemingly explicit that parabiosis was something he hadn’t “quite, quite, quite started yet.” A Thiel Capital spokesman said nothing had changed since then.”
===========================
“Quite, quite, quite started yet” certainly sounds Clintonesque to me. A normal person would say “has not started yet” and when you start putting “quite” in front, and than 3 “quites” as a qualifier, it begs the question of what an official, legal start of Parabiosis is….using a virgin???
Andy Warhol’s Dracula explicitly shows the danger of non-wirgin blood…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSXhAbK3Xnk
!!!
Props on the Warhol gloss! I have never seen that movie … I have to watch it. I’m a huge Warhol fan.
MikeNY
August 2, 2016 at 9:25 am
The movie is great – hilarious and bloody, and a great critique of capitalism. And the use of “wirgin” was not a typo
i think it’s the ‘yet’ that should give the most pause for concern
Just wait for it……..they’ll leap, sure as carts to horses, to the next level of depravity:
…BABIES BLOOD !
Peter Thiel certainly is an argument for restricting immigration, isn’t he? There’s something about being a U.S. citizen that he doesn’t get.
Culturally, he is also the Dick Cheney of gay liberation.
A loathesome person.
Vampire capitalists!
Peter Thiel is just the latest iteration of the undead vampire flick genre…
h/t Oscar Wilde: life imitates art.
Gotta agree. This is beyond creepy.
Although, if you think about it, this could be the beginning of an innovative, disruptive solution to the student debt crisis.
Wow that is some seriously high grade cynicism. I like it!
It’s not very high tech, but it’s a lot safer to simply avoid trans fats and refined sugar, and to eat lots of broccoli, blueberries, parsley, tomatoes, and similar foods. It’s less expensive, too.
C’mon, Peter Thiel. Blood transfusions are dangerous, not magical.
Besides, Lizbeth Bathory perfected this bloody fountain of youth technique back in the 1500’s. Ya gotta bathe in the blood of virgins if you wanna live forever.
True, Lizbeth isn’t around anymore that we know of, so her method may not be foolproof after all, but it’s got to irk you some to know that she was far, far more disruptive in her day than you’ll ever be.
May I suggest you go freeze yourself? Leave your money in a trust fund. We promise to wake you up in a couple thousand years . . .
Pretty comprehensive review. I am reminded of the hemophilia clinic I worked in during the time of AIDS when it was still called HTLV III. Patients of course took pooled blood products regularly. AIDS of course and sadly was epidemic. If there is an unidentified new pathogen in the blood supply the risk of exposure is extremely high if you have to take pooled blood products on a regular basis. Hubris.
A Felix Salmon piece on Uber’s deal in China. Key paragraph on its effect on the deal’s fallout
for consumers and drivers (including in the US):
Maybe some innovative politicians and prosecutors can crack the code and disrupt the `ride-sharing’ industry by going after an industry totally based on wholesale violations of local regulations and laws.
I have seen how the drivers are treated by their Uber overlords. Condescension is a nice way of putting it.
This is a company that is a nice, juicy target for union organizers. And it deserves to be.
And the Democratic Party will put on its walking shoes and march with those organizers. Oh, wait …
Shouldn’t that just be Uberlords?
Or the honorific Uberloadsmajordonor?
Ubermensch?
I think of political parties as unions for politicians.
Job #1 – to fight for better pay for our ‘statesmen’ and ‘stateswomen.’
And here I thought that the deal was pretty much so that Uber has at least some cash w/o the investors having to stump up some more (Uber losing money is different from Amazon losing money. Amazon has the money, but is investing it, Uber is, IIRC, struggling to break even under best circumstances)
“Some readers had claimed the reserve would happen that Switzerland would get its break”
I think you meant the “reverse would happen”
The link to this article doesn’t work on my computer and I can’t find the article on OpEd News itself. An improved link?
I forgot to mention the title of the article in the previous comment: What does the Virulent Hatred of Hillary Clinton Really Mean for Our Democracy in the Long Term?
Couldn’t get the link to open either – get an about.com error. Maybe the Russians hacked the website to protect Hillary. In any case, I think I found it on another website:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ja/node/539962
So … Benghazi , voter fraud , secret private server with classified material , Using the Clinton Foundation as a cover for tax evasion, Hiring Cronies, And taking bribes from foreign countries , Giving 123 Technologies $300 Million, and right afterward it Declared Bankruptcy and was sold to the Chinese , Arming the Muslim Brotherhood and hiring them in the White House , Whitewater, Watergate committee, Vince Foster, Shady Commodity Deals , Funding of neoNazis in the Ukraine that led to the toppling of the democratically elected president and to the biggest crisis that country has had since WWII , Turning Libya into chaos , Mastermind of the so-called “Arab Spring” that only brought chaos, death and destruction to the Middle East and North Africa , Leaving four Americans to die in Benghazi , Encouraging and supporting the murders of Palestinians and the destruction of their homes, towns and villages by Israel , The funding and arming of terrorists in Syria, the destruction and destabilization of that nation, giving the order to US lapdogs in Turkey and Saudi Arabia to give sarin gas to the “moderate” terrorists in Syria that they eventually used on civilians, and framed Assad, and had it not been for the Russians and Putin, we would have used that as a pretext to invade Syria, put a puppet in power, steal their natural resources, and leave that country in total chaos, just like she did with Libya? , Creation of the biggest refugees crisis since WWII , Leaving Iraq in chaos , DOJ spying on the press , HHS Secretary Sibelius shaking down health insurance Executives , Giving our cronies in SOLYNDRA $500 MILLION DOLLARS and 3 Months Later they declared bankruptcy and then the Chinese bought it , NSA monitoring citizens , State Department interfering with an Inspector General Investigation on departmental sexual misconduct , Hillary, The IRS, Clapper and Holder all lying to Congress , Threats to all of Bill’s former mistresses to keep them quiet , Stealing the White House furniture, silverware, when Bill left Office have nothing to do with it; voters are not supporting Hillary because they just hate her!
Well, when you put it like that…
Just 2 in this long bill of particulars:
“Giving 123 Technologies $300 Million, and right afterward it Declared Bankruptcy and was sold to the Chinese ,
and
“Giving our cronies in SOLYNDRA $500 MILLION DOLLARS and 3 Months Later they declared bankruptcy and then the Chinese bought it ”
The Clintons seem to have a long history (going back to ’95 – ’96 at least) of doing “favors” for the Chinese govt.
I wonder if going after Putin with the possibility of destabilizing Russia is also favor to China? ( In addition to the neocons dreams.)
Russia and China are closer than ever. Russia is necessary for Chinese hegemony. China is way too large to make a deal without a counter balance or a mommy to run to for reassurance. Enter Russia. Unlike the U.S. vassals, it can withstand a trade war.
The whole point of attacking Russia is because we can’t attack China. One of the aims of the TPP is to cut China out of large portions of the world economy.
The Russians and Chinese are working on separate world financial infrastructure to directly weaken American control.
Just to be clear, China is the target of the neoconservatives. One billion highly educated people. They even had a 90’s cottage book industry about coming wars with China when the U.S. stopped defending the free world.
Russia is less than half the size of the U.S. with long borders surrounded by U.S. bases. There are area few anti Russians out there. Hillary might be one. She isn’t altogether that bright, and no history will give Obama a thumbs up over Syria for which he probably lyrics blames Putin, but China is still the threat.
I should add. The neoconservatives are cognizant of technological dominance being undone over time, and they saw Russian and Chinese weapons being developed to undermine U.S. offensive fire power for relatively dirt cheap prices. Their goal is to lock in as much of the world under friendly governments or just wreck the place to a point where there is no government to buy from Russia or China or even Iran. Deep down, they know the F35 doesn’t work or make sense. It’s about control and investments too big to walk away from. If the S400 and retrofitted cessnas can solve a country’s defense problems, why buy something more expensive?
Iraq and Syria as somewhat secular Muslim countries could serve as potential allies for Iran or Russia or even a Turkey withdrawn from Europe. The West has nothing special about it that guarantees dominance, and they know this.
And a third major point, the neoconservatives are acutely aware that we were shipping factories to China in the 1980’s to buy them off when the Soviets wanted them to remain agricultural as one billion Red Chinese would represent the a threat Moscow dominance. Remember very few saw the collapse of the USSR. The foreign policy was set. We were still buying them.
Occasionally a politician trots out the red menace, but the real threat to American elite hegemony is a dominant China. Despite the mocking it receives, the American foreign policy establishment is full of people who believe:
-Americans are morally exceptional
-too many Americans are too stupid and Ignorant to understand the first point and won’t assist in world leadership
-domino theory is real. If the U.S. gives an inch, clones of Hitler will pour out of Brazil intent on passing universal health care.
These are not sane or decent people. They play debate and live in a relative golden era where institutional protections and oceans protect them. Pride goes before the fall for a reason. The oceans protect them, but without Turkish airspace, much of our ability to project force is gone. Uprisings in the right countries means our ships can’t resupply, and we don’t have much of a support fleet anymore. Our navy simply can’t deploy from a few strategic bases anymore.
Without U.S. dominance, many neoconservatives would be out of a job as they won’t be in demand anymore to explain America.
A very interesting trifecta of posts. Thanks. One thing that made me smile while reading was that with the experience I have had with Chinese engineering students, people should not be so certain that the Chinese workforce is as educated as their credentials suggest. My experience is anecdotal, yet there seems to be a fair amount of evidence that the “by any means” method of attaining qualifications is considered relatively culturally acceptable.
NotTimothyGeithner
August 2, 2016 at 3:02 pm
Always enjoy your analyses!
So it begs the question – who do you see “prevailing” in 10 or twenty years – or is that even a pertinent question?
Can’t you say something nice?
Trump doesn’t have any experience.
Marianne Mazzucato says Solyndra was victim of public/private partnership impatience. The private investors are the ones who made it fail.
This link works: http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-does-the-Virulent-Hat-by-Stephen-Fox-Facebook-Bernie-Sanders-Advice-And-Strategies_Halliburton-KBR_Henry-Kissinger_Hillary-As-Warmongering-Hawk-160729-515.html
That student loan piece hits a raw nerve. I value education, to be sure, but the cost/benefit in dollar terms is painful with an ever-growing, never-healing wound on my finances that has a very real cost. Oddly, most of the academic types I know make beans, so the bezzle on the student loan racket must be absurd.
It wouldn’t surprise me if we end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater and a whole generation votes to destroy higher ed rather than reform it. Dousing a racket in gasoline might be easier than overcoming MBA-magical thinking and bureaucracy.
Every article seems to concentrate on incoming students. It’s the students who have already graduated or who have left without graduating and who carry large debt loads that are the issue. They cannot start thier lives, purchase homes or spend to generate movement in the economy. They are mainly angry, distrustful, disillusioned and consequently lack faith in any political solution. They will be the nightmare for a republic.
..and ‘they’ will ALSO spread those feelings of angst and ill will to their ‘younger’ cohorts…..who will continue to see the ‘higher education’ scam for what it is….
Double Plus Nightmare !
The purposes of PR pieces like this from Ed Reform Now and it surrogate groups like DFER isn’t to destroy all of higher ed, just the higher ed that doesn’t serve low-income people. The student loan racket is very profitable, but they want to get rid of “customers” that they lose money on. The discussion now is where to draw the line. It’s not clear but it’s somewhere below the Univ. of Virginia and above Corinthians.
If we’re talking about cost/benefit, we might also consider mentioning the “benefits.” Give people jobs and pay them what they’re worth and there’s no “crisis”. $30k income 10 years after entering college? That’s the real scandal.
Uh, 30k ten years after entering the workforce at any level is a disgrace. Hell, you can’t even afford to rent or own a 100k micro home on that.
I don’t know the numbers now, but back in roughly ’06 a bunch of firedogs (Hugh) did the math and at that point if an early 1970’s min wage rose with inflation min wage should have been over 20.00 (40k). Ten years ago.
I’m barely old enough to remember Mom working as secretary for a Chancellor for maybe a couple hundred a week back then… and it was tough but nothing like trying to make it on 10 to 15 an hour now.
try 25K (in a good year) 30 yrs after entering the workforce, and 3 different trade schools at own expense, and then being told that its all the big bad governments fault
Don’t be so greedy! Hillary would have had to give three and one third speeches to banks to make the equivalent of 30 years worth of work at $25K a year. Sheesh!
One of the big reasons for ceaseless growth of education costs is the increasing size of administrator. The main growth is not directly because of the salaries of high-paid administrators (200k+/year), but rather the 30-60k/year salary administrators that are hired to provide justification for more administration. Disentrenching this mid- and upper-layer of administrators is not an easy task, since they are politically unified on campuses and within the Democrat party apparatus. (Health care faces a similar issue.)
Brexit=Moar lawyers!
Is B. Schneier now an insecurity expert as he moves up the media food chain from blogger to commenter?
Hmmm… I count nine legs in the Antidote du Jour.
I squinted and counted ten. Semipalmated plover, perhaps.
That IS odd.
I think the 1st chick to come under mom’s fold is probably comfortably ‘resting’…with one leg tucked.
Amazing how many chicks a hen can take under her wings.
The politically correct way to refer to Hillary’s people is not chicks under her wings, but as her Administrative Staff.
Or were you referring to today’s Antidote . . .?
Young blood for billionaires. I KNEW this would happen when the research came out. It IS true that infusions of young blood into old animals goes a way towards rejuvinating the old. There are growth factors, hormones, cytokines, chemokines in young blood at levels that don’t exist in the blood of the old. These components act upon the cells of the old in such a way that it is like turning back the biological clock a certain degree. The research was published showing the effect in mice. Alternatively, the opposite is also true, to a degree (depending on how much young blood is replaced by old blood in youths).
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v20/n6/full/nm.3569.html
http://www.nature.com/news/ageing-research-blood-to-blood-1.16762
This research shows that it would likely be quite beneficial for elderly patients after surgery to receive blood transfusions from young donors to help speed healing and repair.
I KNEW that this would have to set the vampire parasitic rich onto buying up young blood to infuse themselves with to try and grab as much longevity and rejuvenation as they could. They have the money, the self-entitlement and belief that they are indispensible, so they would seek for themselves what isn’t broadly available to real people. Scumbags.
When/if a “youth pill” is produced by some pharmaceutical company, it will be prohibitively expensive, natch, in spite of the fact that demand for such a pill would be very high (nearly universal) so that high prices wouldn’t be necessary to make bank on it. Thus, the rich will be the only ones who can afford it and the only ones to enjoy the benefits. Attempting to make permanent their own personal plutocratic rule.
I suppose the question is does this make them vampires or war boys?
Is Peter Thiel awaited in Valhalla or is he going to have to sit around and mope all day, as if he were in an Anne Rice novel?
the Thiel’s know a different desperate fear…they have no soul to lose but plenty material will vanish to their like-minded.
“We are the things that others fear. Remember that.”
Rice, The Vampire Lestat
I guess when you have so much more money than any one person could ever spend in a lifetime you have to start making plans for how you are going to spend it. The fact that these plans seem to be devolving towards extending the lifespans of the uber wealthy says a lot about their mindset.
Btw I think you will like the caracal video I linked to below.
Maybe Thiel could make deals with overly-indebted post-college students: pay off their debt in exchange for their blood.
Win-win!!!
Katniss beat you to it on this angle, but yes, it wouldn’t surprise me.
Hmm.. I’m not sure whether this works. By definition elderly receive blood of younger ones. The average age of a UK donor is below 40 I believe (there are two main bulges in the distribution, one around 20, the other around 44). The max age for donation is 66 right now (in the UK). So basically, anyone under about 40, is very likely to get “younger blood”, and anyone below 60 is practically guaranteed.
If there were serious results, one would think that you’d see it in the decades of the real data.
The experiment where it is being expressly tested in humans is using young blood, as in early 20s. 40s, though not “old” is definitely the same thing as young adult. Late teens and early 20s is the “magic” area. It’s before the brain is fully developed, before the bones have solidified, before hormones begin to decline, etc.
The caracal is a fierce and agile predator. And the way it pursues airborne prey is astounding.
i’ve always viewed everything about the caracal as art in the making
beautiful video…Thanks
Can’t have an honest conversation about immigration so here’s what we get. Of course, these FACTS are being spoken by a politician so they must not be true.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/2QOwAJ2ez6U
PRESERVE THE STATUS QUO!
Clinton’s choice of “ambassador” to white men almost made me spit out my oolong. The only person who could possibly get a cooler reception in the Rust Belt than her own person is her husband, at least if my dad’s local is any indication.
Do they not understand how toxic NAFTA is even now among the working class? Working people feel betrayed by their government, and you send the traitor in chief to mollify them?
While Bill Clinton is particularly tone deaf, Uncle Joe Biden is not far behind. Especially when you consider that he has been doing some pretty heavy lifting on the PR assault front for TPP. Kaine might, and I say might be a wash. Perhaps. I’m not a rust belt white man. I could have missed their recognition of his pro Trade neo liberal bonafides.
Once again, the Clinton campaign shows that competence regarding anything about the electorate besides the ability to read a poll is beyond them. No wonder they have gotten so good at rigging the system.
Along with deputy traitor Tim Kaine, who voted for fast track trade promotion authority, a precursor to passing the toxic TPP.
Maybe they should send lawyer Khan.
Can’t do worse than Mr. Kaine.
Yes but he was always great at feeling their pain.
re: Obama Orders Air Campaign Against ISIS in Libya, Escalating ‘No-Boots War’
Bombing in order to address the problems caused by our last bombing. No doubt CNN etc., are presenting numerous experts who explain why this campaign will succeed. No congressional approval. Obviously the Obama regime did not want to make the mistake of allowing the American people to weigh in on this since it is quite likely that the result would have been similar to the regime’s desire to bomb Syria a couple of years ago.
the strikes were carried out by authority of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force against al-Qaeda, the same authorization used for the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and Syria.
That 2001 authorization has turned out to be very handy indeed.
Does the same 2001 authorization permit the arming of Al Qaeda in Syria? That’s one hell of an authorization!
I am watching 0bama on TV talking live right now at a conference with the Singaporean Prime Minister in DC and he is one of the most despicable people I have ever seen (though admittedly there are quite a few finding their way into that bracket lately). He just cannot stop lying, spinning the truth, shilling for the TPP and evil people in general. He is subhuman scum.
Also why does 0bama always scratch his nose with his hand in “flipping the bird” configuration? It seems to only happen when he is put on the spot to answer a question he does not want to answer, like it is his standard too-smart-by-half show of open contempt. So yeah, no one need reply to my question. What a tiny, tiny, little prick of a man.
Hand to face is a lying tell.
Any good highlights?
Nope. Like many others here I cannot bear his lying voice, so I would periodically unmute the TV for long enough to let a few of his words assault my brain and I could pretty much trace the narrative and work out that it was just the same tired old crap. His body language looked odd though; rather than blinking he was closing his eyes for a little longer, like he was really straining to remember his talking points. He gave the impression of a (small, small) man under pressure, actually, but then his default smug arrogance would shine through again once he had found an angle to work. Ugh.
The weird thing to me, is how “likeable” I had found Obama. I now realize it was likeable, like a vampire (the Undead) are said to be; beautiful, charming, soulless, ruthless and without a reflection are some of the other tells. I was so foolish.
Obama has been one of the great disappointments of my life. “Change I can believe in.” I stopped believing 7.5 years ago
i stopped ‘believing’ change…as soon as he announced his economic ‘team’ of vultures……
so…..7.9 1/2 for me……!
I find him less unlikable all the time given current presidential choices …
I really hated him and his policies before though, only the current choices have cast him in a more flattering light.
Interestingly, ISIL/ISIS did not exist in 2001. Here’s a link with the text of the Authorization for Use
of Military Force, SJRes 23:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/23/text
The main paragraph of the resolution:
I don’t think this resolution can be legitimately used to justify actions against ISIL in Libya, but I’m not a lawyer.
That authorization, as the article says, was also used to justify military actions in Iraq, Libya, Syria etc., To the best of my knowledge none of those countries were involved in any way with 9/11.
You are reading the authorization as any normal person would – the language seems pretty clear. But normal people are in short supply in DC.
The article is mistaken about the use of that resolution to justify action in Iraq. A year later there was a separate resolution for that:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house-joint-resolution/114/text
But as you said, I am reading this as a normal person would
The major problem is that Congress has been so spineless in this usurpation of their Constitutional authority. And they are spineless why? Because to vote for a new war is to be held accountable. Heaven forbid.
Indeed, if they really are so upset about executive encroachment, as they whine on an almost daily basis, they could simply take the money away.
Except, that would mean cutting the defense budget, which, for whatever reason, is regarded as sacrosanct.
I think you are right, this is why they were pushing a bill for a separate AUMF against ISIS. But I have no idea whether it was ever passed or not.
Massachusetts Becomes First State Ever To Ban Employers From Asking For Salary Histories
every now and then the good guys win
https://www.thestreet.com/story/13660127/2/wall-street-again-calls-on-southwest-airlines-to-impose-bag-fees.html
The airline that sucks the least is under pressure to step up it’s level of suckiness to industry standard levels. They quote an analyst at JPM who says, “moar feez!”. The pressure in favor of crapification is strong!
I have decided that tiny houses and micro apartments are just a way to extend the real estate bubble. also too class warfare.
Stackable dog crate are the future.
‘Rent to Own!’
that kinda reminds me of Cole’s ‘caged quarters’ in ‘The Twelve Monkeys’…….
I went past the Theranos corp. headquarters a few weeks ago and the parking lot was eerily empty, by 5:30-PM-in-the-Bay-Area standards.
Remember a year or two ago, Forbes, Fortune, and The NYer all put out profiles of Holmes/Theranos lauding her “technological breakthroughs”, though the details were enshrouded in secrecy…yet another SV “disrupter/innovator” who subsequently couldn’t match the hype nor a long-overdue closer scrutiny. Next up: a co-venture with Peter Thiel on discovering “technology to enable everlasting life”.
Chlorine gas attack in Syria. Fifteen kilometers (approx 9 miles) from where a Russian helicopter was shot down the other day, killing five. The “barrel bomb” meme is in play, yet Assad seems to be on the front foot with Russia’s help these days. John Kerry is trying to get Russia and Assad to stop any military operations, saying “the evidence is very troubling, to everybody”, which is useless information. Someone is getting desperate.
The Sultan has demanded the Syrian government and Russians stop all combat in Aleppo:
https://southfront.org/turkey-demands-to-stop-attacks-on-aleppo-city/
There wouldn’t be any fighting around Aleppo if Turkey would just close the damn border from their side. We’ve in the final stage of the siege, have been since the SAA closed the last rebel supply line. But that supply line runs north into Turkey. There wouldn’t have been any need to slowly encircle the city if Turkey would stop supplying these guys.
My guess is that there will be no halt in combat operations, and the UN, Kerry, Erdogan, and all the rest can whine and whine and whine all they want. The rebels are done, and soon Russia and Syria can turn their full attention to ISIS and AQ, probably by resuming the push for Deir ez-Zor.
Adding: There is a chemical weapons expert doing the rounds already who has “no doubt it was the regime”, due to the use of “barrel bombs”, and because “every time Assad has been desperate he has done the same thing”.
Where do they find these people? How fucking uncritical would you have to be to “just know” you are right, in a case like this, especially when you are spouting bs that serves a specific political function.
Yes, I know.
Well, it’s August, so this must be a summer rerun from 2013.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-23906913
Assad is about as far from desperate as you can get right now. The desperate ones are the many Islamist groups, who pooled together all their resources, including apparently scrounging together every last tank and APC they could find, to launch an all out offensive to break the Aleppo siege. The offensive failed in a single day, and their armor was shredded. This will likely make future SAA offensives that much more effective.
Who ……U.S….France……Saudi Arabia…..who?
I’m also including Israel in the list of possibilities.
I’m actually starting to wonder if Israel and Saudi Arabia are operating on the same principle as the (cough) Democratic (cough) and Republican parties were operating under before Trump came along. By staking out the extremes of the opposing positions in the Middle East, they can effectively control the whole discourse within that frame.
In this context one could see the Palistinean nightmare as simply being about strengthening the perception of Israel being totally separate entity from the Arabic Middle Eastern countries, as well as keeping the anger burning in the surrounding Arabic population. Both of these outcomes would seem to serve a purpose.
What If Donald Trump Is Just An Elaborate Prank?
Don’t know whether to laugh or cry…
The 99% serfs are likely to cry.
Cry over the coming of TPP…
Cry over the relentless propaganda machine of Wall Street’s candidate.
Nope. Not even worth reading imo.
especially as it’s a video, ugh what the @#$# is up with video internet these days. Yea I could believe Donald Trump is a prank but wikileaks or I don’t believe it!
Isn’t Hillary clever to get Putin to fall right into her trap? She’ll be great to have our first lady president be strong on nat security
I’m sorry someone has to say the obvious: Hillary can’t stop lying. Not only would telling the truth lose her the election, she has been lying to get this for so long it is part of who she is.
Seriously can anyone imagine this level of honesty:
1. I didn’t care about the country’s security, I cared about my own. My work product needed to be protected from FOIA requests. That was my only concern. Laws, regulations, standards, and security be damned. Of course I broke them, and I would do it again, even after this uproar.
2. I don’t give a damn about the working people of America. If you were smart and important you wouldn’t be working class and struggling.
3. I have no strong beliefs regarding women’s reproductive rights or civil rights, particularly for gays. I’ll be all for them or against them unless doing that might hinder me getting into a better office to line my own pockets in which case I’ll triangulate my position so much it is meaningless. See my marriage statements, my endorsement of abstinence education, ‘safe, legal and rare’ and clear acceptance that there could be further restrictions on access with caveats I care little about. Why not, it isn’t as if you all haven’t ignored this in the past.
4. If your proposal, position, or ethical stand will in anyway harm my largest campaign “donors” you should expect me to kneecap them and you without blinking an eye. Immigration, trade, climate change, et al will never be important to me.
5. War is money for my best donors (both because it opens new territory for them and for some they supply the products needed). I will start as many as I can. And Russia is tops on my list. They will never use nuclear weapons against us.
I am still the best most qualified woman to be President AND IT DAMN WELL WILL BE ME. YOUR opinion isn’t necessary or wanted, merely your obedience.
Perfect, except change last word to ‘vote.’
Hillary can’t stop lying.
It’s not just that she is now locked in to her lies on the campaign trail and cannot deviate from her prior utterances, she literally cannot stop lying, as in she seems to have a compulsion to lie just for the sake of lying; for no reason whatsoever. Of course the reason for this is that she has absolutely no ethical framework from which to make sense of the world, and once you start trying to make decisions from a fundamentally incoherent view of what it means to be human, nothing makes sense and saying one thing probably seems pretty much the same as saying something else.
the example given was the notorious SOS emails. She lies to cover up what she really did, because it could be political dynamite and because she’s only sort of off the hook for criminal charges – for instance, a different president and FBI director could easily indict her.
So at least, it wasn’t just habit; it was self-preservation.
I was thinking, among other examples, of the story of her and Chelsea arriving at that airport (can’t recall which country off the top of my head), and being ambushed and coming under live fire.
I guess even though she is one of the most destructive people on Earth, she does not feel like people understand what a hero she is, so she needs to lie to validate herself.
Thiel & blood.
Maybe he’s paying for the blood directly from screened individuals, not buying it from a blood wholesaler. I sold my plasma, a few times, to pay my long distance phone bills to my girlfriend, when I was at UCLA.
You can’t screen enough unless you have them under constant surveillance. People have sex, use dirty implements, etc. Diseases take a while to become symptomatic.
Here is a real gem: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/senate-bernie-sanders-226524
“Swing-state Democrats ask Bernie for help”
Uh-oh. Ann Kirkpatrick is one of them. Looks like the Bernster may be headed back here.
If I go to his rally and boo when he urges people to vote for Clinton, will y’all forgive me?
If you actively campaign for Hillary you are her. Anything goes.
A proud and active Bernster back in the day…
’cause Hillary’s not exactly helping……..I mean, she took all their money for her campaign.
Re Trump on Crimea:
Much as I hate to say it, Trump is right. First of all, Russia did not invade Crimea. Russia supported the majority of Crimeans who voted for independence from Ukraine in a referendum, and very likely provided them with some military support. Isn’t that what Western powers, including the US, did to help Croatian, Bosnian and Albanian separatists in former Yugoslavia? (Leading to a horrific civil war that is still smoldering.)
Putin then exercised restraint and did not invade Ukraine, which he could easily have overrun in a matter of days. And yes, if we try to take back Crimea, against the will of the majority of its citizens, that might well trigger a World War III, which could easily devolve into a nuclear war. Which is apparently what Hillary would like to see, judging from her bellicose rhetoric.
Days? Hours, or however fast you can drive a tank from the Donbass to the Polish border, with scheduled breaks for beer, snacks and selfies.
Did you catch Cameron Abadi of Foreign Policy Magazine and Angela Stent, wife of Daniel Yergin of Georgetown Russian studies give their job interview for the Vicki Nuland-Kagan State Department this morning on NPR’s On Point.
Bad Putin, Bad Russia, all the time. Bad, Bad, Bad. Stealing Crimea Bad. Killing Ukies in Dombass region Bad. Bad Trump for supporting Commie Dictator thug Putin. Bad Russian corrupting democracy in America on the intertubes. As if the NSA is helpless. Bad Trump again. Bad Putin hysterical about nukes…no Vlad, they are only to protect against Iran. NeoCon Dream Plan, Seven countries, Five Years. Our neo con nomenklatura wants it real bad.
We are so screwed.
Well, no. Nobody annexed Croatia, Bosnia, or Kosovo, but Russia annexed Crimea. If Crimea had become an independent state, then yes, those events would have been similar, although I have doubts about the separatists’ margin of victory in the election. It reminds me of DNC election rigging.
Trump is correct that the U.S. should not go to war over Crimea. That toothpaste is out of the tube, and can’t be put back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Independence_of_the_Republic_of_Crimea
Crimea declared its independence on March 11th, held a referendum on March 16th, became part of Russia on the 18th.
That’s one way of looking at it. From the declaration:
Declaring independence with the explicit intention of becoming part of another country is not what I would consider much of a declaration of independence, but I admit, they had 2 days of limited independence. During that period of time, the Russian military had a prominent presence in the country.
Misleading. The Russians had always had a base there. There were no troops added or movements off the base.
You also airbrush out that the new Ukrainian Minister of Defense (one of the neo-Nazis) said in a video that it was fine by him if solders confiscated property from people of Russian descent. He said ethnic cleansing was OK. That was presumably to help induce soldiers go into Eastern Ukraine, but the implications were not lost in Crimea.
I said nothing about the corrupt policies of Ukrainian government officials. I strongly object to ethnic cleansing anywhere.
Troops either moved off the bases, or came from Russia. Have you forgotten the “Little Green Men”?
I reiterate what I said in my earlier comment: the toothpaste is out of the tube, and Crimea is now part of Russia.
One other point: I believe the creep you are referring to is Myhailo Koval, who made his odious statements in June, more than two months after the annexation of Crimea. He wasn’t even Defense Minister until after the annexation, so his statements couldn’t have affected how people voted in the referendum. He might never have become Defense Minister if the annexation hadn’t occurred.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykhailo_Koval
June 12:
https://ukrainanews.wordpress.com/2014/06/12/kiev-already-creates-concentration-camps-for-all-inhabitants-of-donbass-though-war-still-goes-the-minister-of-defence-video/
Why would anyone want to annex Croatia, Bosnia or Kosovo? Please.
Oh and by the way, we BOMBED Belgrade. Now if Putin bombed Kiev there’d be quite a stir, no?
I’m not defending the bombing of Belgrade. However, this came after ethnic Serbs had committed widespread ethnic cleansing against Muslims and Croats. Yugoslavia was and is a mess, and it’s probably impossible to unravel the good and the bad.
At a MI polling station today, I made my ritual stink about photo ID and having to vote party line. A young woman, a Sanders delegate at convention, overheard and grabbed me for a long tight hug and dragged me outside. I told her I was proud and grateful for what they’re doing, and she teared up. This bunch is feeling vulnerable right now, but in a way that seems to have further radicalized them.
She happily mentioned that Clinton’s stump meetings are poorly attended and constantly protested. Some plan to annoy Hillary surrogate Kwan, when she comes to Detroit in mid-August.
She said that her bunch is currently split willy-nilly re voting: Hillary, Stein, some leaving blank (or Bernie write-in), and a few for Trump. Also mentioned ongoing conversations between them and Trumpers. She said the Trumpers are well aware that Trump is corrupt but are looking for structural breakdown. If Bernie had continued, she said, these Trumpers would have voted for him.
Adding, I asked her about the Trump supporters voting for Bernie, since he was as distant from trad repub ideology as can be had here in US. She said yes but Bernie was honest and straight, and he saw them and sympathized with their predicament and had bothered to come up with some concrete ideas about how to help them. This was more important to them than the policies themselves.
That is to say, she said, they would have been willing to try some of his ideas simply because he noticed and understood what was going on with them.
So the Hildabeast plans on winning over white males by whipping out Billy Bob, and playing Motown and Hall and Oates?
ROTFLMAO
For starters, none of us thinks things were that great when the male skank was in office. Starting with NAFTA.
Look at the voting records. He may have BS’d women and minorities into buying into his lies, but us blue collar white guys recognized his type…..a “buddy” who is trying to bang your sister/girlfriend when you aren’t around. A “who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes?” type.
The best Hildabeast can hope for is that white guys are so disgusted by our alternatives, we will stay home. In which case, all she needs to do is let The Donald keep flapping his lips.
Sorry Steve but ‘Billy Bob’ has a little too much experience in “whipping it out” for any reasonably aware male to ever trust him near the levers of power again. Er, maybe that should be, the Dugs of Democracy.
Hillary surely know white guys like BJs. So there’s that.
“So the Hildabeast plans on winning over white males by whipping out Billy Bob”
I thought Steve in Flyover meant it as Hilary would be our first transgenered president….read it as “So the Hildabeast plans on winning over white males and/or transgenders by whipping out HER own Billy Bob”
I mean, I imagine she would do it for a some votes….but maybe I’m reading too much between the lines…
You’re right. Identity politics.
She’s trying to win over white males with the same maudlin American family traditionalism of which the right-wing bipartisan consensus made so much hay in the ’90s, applied with 150% more cynicism. As a white male, I can’t go for that. No can do.
But I can’t go for that, nooo
(No)
No can do
I can’t go for that, nooo
(No)
No can do
I can’t go for that, nooo
(No)
No can do
I can’t go for that
Can’t go for that
Can’t go for that
Can’t go for that, yeah.
“I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)” was a phrase Daryl Hall used when he was pressured to go along with the crowd against his wishes.
re “Clinton falling into same trap as Remain”
It reads pretty well as an apologia for the indifference of the Remain camp, but look at this bit:
“Again, there will be racists amongst Trump supporters. How could there not be when the man at the top of the Republican ticket has been so anti-Muslim and anti-Mexican, to name just two groups? ”
I’m not sure there is even a thing as “race” to begin with, but given the current parameters of the discussion: I KNOW that “Muslim” is not a “race.” I do not believe that “Mexican” is a race, either but I could be wrong.
And the English “Remainers” present themselves as the smart ones.
racism and bigotry have become synonymous
I was googling around looking for a clip of the Lisa Simpson character saying her line, “I’m proud to be our first straight female President.” This is, I find out, from a Season 11 episode, aired in March 2000: “Bart to the Future.” I encountered a Salon article that was dismissive of the episode: http://www.salon.com/2016/03/23/heres_the_scariest_thing_about_the_simpsons_episode_that_predicted_president_trump/
The article stretched and spun to make the episode come off as crass and vulgar. Well, it’s the Simpsons. What does one expect? Many call it one of the series worst episodes. It hit several nerves, what comedy is supposed to do if done right. Even at its’ worst, this show is Americas’ ‘Jester,’ in all that positions’ meanings.
So, Salon is a H Clinton apologist publication. This appears to be the level of discourse encountered in Robber Baron Era publications. Back then, anyone with some backing could print up a screed and circulate it, even if clandestinely. Now, even the Internet is becoming a Private Preserve.
It’s a terrible episode lacking any sense of satire or reflection on contemporary values pushed by networks. James Brooks was correct in his view they shouldn’t do in the future episodes except for the one he wrote “Lisa’s Wedding.”
Irony Alert Status: Infinite
Why Tax Havens Are Political and Economic Disasters
Interesting read at the Atlantic. Recommended.
Ah, ha! Let the Splintering of the Republican Party continue!
More GOP politicos endorse H Clinton, and abandon their natural base; People who want things to be as they once were.
Blowback can be a …
Expect deluge to follow.
HIllary has helped to reveal Buffet, Warren and these GOP politicians for what they are.
Thank you, your royal highness.
as more gop establishment figures join the democrats’ sinking ship, more democrats on the left will be disenfranchised and jump ship.
RE: Woolly Mammoth
This article obscures, a bit, the predicament of these mammoths. So how did they get on this island in the first place? It’s some 230 nautical miles from the Alaska mainland. The answer is somewhat obsured in the story: the end of the Ice Age (~18,000 YA). Initially the mammoths likely walked to the location that became St. Paul Island.
Only as Bering Sea rose some 300 feet in sea level did the mammoths plight become severe. (Mammoths were likely good swimmers; as are their cousins the elephants.) Early on they likely could have swum to land (now known as the outer continental shelf) that connected to the mainland. Some probably did. As sea level continued to rise St. Paul became the distant island that is described in the article.
The fate of the mammoths can be generalized to humans, I imagine?
2016
#CyberSecurityFundraiser
Ironic indeed. I also love the order of the links (intentional?) as in immediately followed the hyperventilating Schneier. Maybe the fundraiser is a “cry for help”.
#SecretWhiteWeapon
Wherein #CampHIllary fails to realize that the underlying battle is establishment vs non-establishment. Good luck with that. And again, the tidy order of the links leading to …
#CampHIllaryRemain
This is interesting to me because of the reluctance of either side of #EURef to place the blame squarely where is belongs which is on the failure of neoliberalism and the #Fauxsterity to which it gave birth. The same argument can be made of the shortfalls in the US economy and consequently, and the failure to take the correct position stands to produce the same fate for Democrats. Telling people that essentially “the system works” and we just need “to work harder” to improve things for “those who haven’t made it yet” is a status quo proposition, the emptiness of which will not be lost on the disaffected of both the right and left.
Also: Remember how #EURef polling failed to predict #BrExit? The usual suspects have begun to cling to them:
“Polls are dark and full of errors”
The ordering of the links is, in general, highly intentional, made to spark comparison and contrast.
Wonderful. Working as intended. Thank you!
Police kill Baltimore mother and wound 5 year old son.
Too much wrong with this story. See: https://www.rt.com/usa/354330-baltimore-police-korryn-gaines/
The woman was active in exposing police misconduct.
She was young and black.
The SWAT team is called in. They usually have bodycams, which aren’t forthcoming.
Her videos on Facebook are deleted right after her death. (Is this policy? Who decides?)
Then her Instagram account is deleted. (Same as above.)
This blight is spreading. History tells us that it all will get progressively worse. Maybe ignorance is bliss. Unfortunately for TPTB, ignorance cannot be restored. The Garden of Eden story illustrates that.
We’ve
seen this movieread this book before:If her credit score disappears, then we’ll know for sure.
This seems like a purposeful escalation. Black men are going to be fucking furious, and it is not going to end well.
Also may be more damaging to Trump than Clinton.
the worst is that the swat team were sent in to bring her in over an unpaid parking ticket. this is so medieval it sends shivers down my spine.
From. In-the-shadow-of-the-dnc-art-about-politics-vs-political-art:
“most people who would attend a protest aren’t there for the signs or the puppets. However, the cross-section of visual expression at these events can display many of the same techniques — humor, drama, and rebuke”
As we look around, some of us, for ways to maintain our enthusiasm at this point in history, this might be a good place to look. There’s a cross-section between activism and art which can produce new energy and ideas.
Also from the article on art:
“Throughout the march this large-scale version of Cáceres seemed to float above the crowd, conveying a sense of calm. My three-year old daughter actually refused to call it a puppet, saying that the figure was alive, that it was actually Cáceres.”
Boom. There it is, from a three year old, what we are encouraged to forget as adults. Art and the “imagination” may be the real-est terrain we’ve got. The problem is though, that by definition, we can’t call it art or see its value in the early stages. Hopefully, we’re at the point of something new in the world. We sure need it.
I like art and I tend to like art about politics as well as political art, so I followed the driverless car right off the false exit away from ongoing discussions of the election politics.
I read — with some amazement — the link: “In the shadow of the DNC, Art About Politics vs. Political Art”.
My take away from the piece amounted to a snap judgment that both political art and art that’s political — a distinction the author didn’t clearly make is in a very sorry state. Compare the images chosen for the article to paintings or etching by Goya, works by George Grosz, or Diego Rivera, or some of the anti-war poster art of the 60’s.
I haven’t seen the Bernie as Che shirts the author referenced. His criticism that Che was a murderer completely misses the point for why Che was chosen as a symbol — not that I see Bernie as a revolutionary in the sense that Che was. Zappata seems a more fitting symbol but less well-known.
And take a second look at the “young African American boy with his mouth covered by a cloth gag.” That “gag” looks less like a gag than some kind of homemade mask wetted against teargas.
The real klinkers for me were the statements: “With the idolization of Rimbaud and Guevara, it seems that there are numbers of people who either don’t know their history or have simply chosen to ignore repugnant behavior in favor of commodifying them as simply leftists and therefore good .”
“And it would be better if this action were in the name of someone like Cáceres rather than Guevara.”
Chose a dead Saint over a dead soldier as a hero — and don’t hop onboard just because it’s leftist. This critic better go back and read a little more history and give a little thought to current politics. Since this piece was supposed to be about art and the shows there in Philadephia the author might say something more perceptive about art and the current exhibits lightly mentioned in the piece and either think harder or avoid extended political commentary.
My snap impression of the vaunted Philadelphia Art Scene based on viewing a couple of shows there and learning from some teachers selected from that scene — left me very dissatisfied. My sense was that all the worst ideas about art cooked up in the 60’s somehow found a home in Philadelphia. To craft an image imagine a museum filled with various kinds and arrangements of urinals and static filled tv screens showing the essence of past performance art. As for the critic who wrote this piece — don’t quit your day job.
I do have one point of agreement with this author. The Bernie people seem particularly clueless about political art. I do have to wonder about the Bernie as Che shirts. Those shirts seem like a clever way to paint Bernie red. Any Bernie supporters wearing them might ask themselves whether they might be like the “patriots” who wave American flags during a performance of “Born in the USA” or the Jimmy Carter supporters who honored him by playing “Marching Through Georgie.”
“…arrangements of urinals and static filled tv screens…” You have just perfectly described DADA. In fact, didn’t Duchamp, who avoided being called Dada himself, do the famous urinal presentation, “Fountain?”
Bernie as Che conveys more the aspirations of his followers than reality. Bernie as Kerensky is more like it.
I’ve lived in the American south for a long time and let me tell you; playing “Marching Through Georgia” for someone is considered an insult here. The implication would be that the honoree is a Carpetbagger.
Political art is all about secular Ikons. First though, the symbol must be readily ‘available’ to the target audience. The understanding of the nature of the N—s, (the Teutonic N word,) and Cold War C—–s, (the Red Scare C word) is lacking in most younger people today. These old hatreds were visceral in their nature, today they have the cachet of Retro.
The other day I posted a link to a mural of Hillary Clinton in a swimsuit that was painted by a street artist in Melbourne, Australia. Well, there is a new chapter to that story:
Hillary Clinton mural censored by Melbourne street artist with niqab
This link shows the original piece too, as well as some Trump inspired ones, but don’t say I didn’t warn you, and I apologize in advance ;-)
“The rich now control the means of schooling and other cultural apparatuses in the United States. They have disinvested in critical education while reproducing notions of “common sense” that incessantly replicate the basic values, ideas, and relations necessary to sustain the institutions of economic Darwinism…Critical learning has been replaced with mastering test-taking, memorizing facts, and learning how not to question knowledge or authority. Pedagogies that unsettle common sense, make power accountable, and connect classroom knowledge to larger civic issues have become dangerous at all levels of schooling…These radical reformers are also attempting to restructure how higher education is organized. In doing so, they are putting in place modes of governance that mimic corporate structures by increasing the power of administrators at the expense of faculty, reducing faculty to a mostly temporary and low-wage workforce, and reducing students to customers—ripe for being trained for low-skilled jobs and at-risk for incurring large student loans.”
— Henry Giroux, Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education, 2014
Ha. I’m a member of the student debt club, and reading NC for 8 years I knew better. The wisdom that going to college is the way to get ahead is so ingrained, I falsely concluded my experience would be different than every single thing I had read. Fortunately I graduated, at least, and can afford the monthly loan payments. For too many others that isn’t so.
Yahoo has to have the most hysterical news feeds in the biz, but this one takes the cake:
‘Is Donald Trump plain crazy?’ Big-name writers now questioning GOP nominee’s sanity
Note the Big Names/Usual suspects quoted in the article:
Eugene Robinson
Ezra Klein
David Brooks
Mark Cuban
Why is the thought-leader class so threatened by Trump? What impact would a Trump victory have on their scam? I mean, it’s going to take more than a Trump presidency to discredit Ezra Klein.
Unfortunately.
Is the long sought-after Grand Bargain the thing?
yeah seems like every other article is bashing trump. i saw one lonely fox news article bashing clinton. then i go to the guardian and it’s roughly the same percentage. maybe there’s a quota.
Donald Trump’s life and his definition of success are perfectly rational when viewed through the lens of the US socioeconomic system, so unless these shills want start using their influence to change the rotten system that has also looked after all of them so well first, then they really don’t have an argument. Of course hypocrisy has never really troubled those featured in your list so I’m sure they will just keep banging on about their stupid little talking points etc.
The urinal was Duchamp. I’m suggesting the avant guard in Philadelphia is more than a little retro and replicating. TV screen performance art is 60’s and concept art from around the same era — though I would gracefully stand corrected since I’m not an art historian.
Bernie as Che does indeed convey aspirations of his followers. It also conveys “red” to many of those who want to tar him with that label to help solidify their base and Che is 60’s retro. Political art is indeed about secular icons. But it’s also about choosing those secular icons carefully. The different meanings of Che in the youth audience as opposed to the older farts who support Hillary and Trump make him a choice poor enough to raise my objection that the vendors may be conveying gray propaganda opposing Bernie through his own supporters.
As I recall a high school in Indiana was visited by Jimmy Carter as he made a swing through that state. The high school band played “Marching Through Georgia” for him thinking it would be an honor. I believe “Marching Through Georgia” celebrates Sherman’s scorched earth march through Georgia to capture Atlanta — hardly something any Southerner or any one but a bloody shirt Northern carpetbagger would celebrate.
Sorry – missed hitting the reply button. This is reply to ambrit 3:00 PM above
Got it.
I get the horrible feeling that Bernie as Che might be viewed as ‘Kitsch’ by todays 20’s and 30’s.
A buddy of mine from Atlanta once explained that ‘Shermans,’ a brand of cigarillo, celebrated the Generals’ incendiary proclivities. (LOL y’all. Sherman was the man who made the smokes.) The ‘March to the Sea started out in Atlanta and wended it’s way to Savannah on the Atlantic coast. Roughly 30 to 40 miles wide and 285 miles long, everything in the zone of march was destroyed and the people driven off to spread fear. There is a good scene in the film “The Long Riders,” with Ry Cooder as the musician playing “Marching Through Georgia.”
Trump’s tactics in criticizing Khan are risky, but understandable.
Once more he’s showing he’s not afraid of defying conventional wisdom, or of provoking the establishment.
Meanwhile Trump’s opponents keep showing that they are frightened to challenge him on any substantive policy issues.
There are many areas in which Clinton is afraid to fight Trump, but nowhere is Trump afraid to fight Clinton.
Clinton might use the families of deceased veterans as human shields, but Trump doesn’t negotiate with hostage takers.b
If only Trump were as heroic as you make him sound. And David Sanger of the NYT–supposedly an objective reporter but objectively a Trump opponent–has been challenging him a lot on Russia/Ukraine.
IMO Clinton’s tactics reflect not so much fear as bad politics. She’d be a lot smarter if she kept her hawkishness and wonkishness on a low flame.
>Why Did Russia Send ‘The Terminator’ on a Humanitarian Mission in Syria? Daily Beast
“According to General Rudskoy, the two passengers on board were officers from the Russian Center for the Reconciliation of the Opposing Sides in Syria, a Potemkin peace-building initiative meant to lend a gloss of humanitarianism to the Kremlin’s war for Assad.”
The Daily Beast is engaging in outright deceit here. The only sham was the ceasefire itself, which the Pentagon, CIA, Turkey, and the Gulf States cynically used as an opportunity to regroup and resupply their proxy armies. But from the Russian side the commitment to the ceasefire was genuine, and they overrode the wishes of the Syrian government by reducing the scope of the offensive. The ‘Potemkin’ Reconciliation Center still managed to negotiate the surrender and disarmament of numerous smaller militant groups, though I have no idea how many of the worms eventually crawled back into the fight. Russia made a real attempt at negotiating a peace, giving up a large degree of battlefield momentum in the process and ultimately only prolonging this conflict. They were far too generous in their expectations of foreign powers seeing their cause was lost and throwing in the towel. I expect they won’t make the same mistake again.
When Western media and governments start howling about a humanitarian crisis and the need for negotiation is precisely when you shouldn’t stop the assault, because it means the militants are on the brink of total defeat.
russia must try to end the conflict before january because, if victorious in novembern clinton will reset the war to focus on removing assad.
o Re. Peter Nosferathiel – another notable techie in the I’m-so-important-to-the-world-that-I-must-live-forever camp is Google techno-futurist-douchebag-in-chief Ray Kurzweil.
o Another recent blog post by Dilbert creator Scott Adams:
The Dark and Rotten Election – on Team Hillary’s coordinated use of “dark” to describe Trump’s nomination-acceptance speech. (I’m just glad the HillBotNet finally dropped the inane “dangerous Donald” in favor of a shiny new crowdmeme.)
o Guns and memory of mass shooting collide at Texas campus | Reuters
Because an impromptu-assembled crack squad of gun-totin’ students would have been able to storm the tower and take down the sniper … yah, right. The delusional inanity of the new law would be comical if not for the likelihood that it’s going to take multiple student-tiff-escalates-into-shooting tragedies to get it repealed. If legally possible, the trial lawyers filing the resulting lawsuits should try to get every single lawmaker who voted for this insanity personally and financially accountable.
o The Gender Wage Gap Myth and 5 Other Feminist Fantasies | Time
Discuss! My sense is that some of the issues are a little more nuanced than either side (fact vs myth) avers. I fwded link to Yves, her take:
gotta tell you, #5 and #6 are wrong.
Feminized professions as systematically lower pay jobs. Nursing. School teacher. Secretary.
On Wall Street, women wound up in specialties, like muni finance and private placements, that were lower pay. And how many PE firms have women as partners? Basically zero. And there is no reason a woman can’t be a good PE investor or salesman.
And re #6, transgendered women to men report that the same work is accorded better as a man (people will literally treat their academic work as a woman as worse than as a man, not realizing it was by the same person) and the are no longer interrupted all the time when they speak. Tons of research similarly confirms that the same observation, that if you take the same writing sample and attribute it a male or a female writer, it is scored better for the male writer.
Tangentially, I am reminded of an analogous gender-based fact vs myth issue in the area of linguistics, where the academic-linguist folks at the Language Log blog did a series of fairly brutal takedowns of the pop-cultural “women use more words than men” meme, as popularized by such meme-spreaders as bestselling author and “pioneering neuropsychiatrist” Louann Brizendine. Sample of LL-debunking available here, with embedded link to archive of previous blog posts on said topic.
Actually, the Texas Tower shooter was taken down by a campus cop with the help of a local citizen who brought his own WWII M1 Garand to the fight.
And how does that negate my point about armed students, i.e. lots of guns in the hands of nonprofessionals of a very young age and having 0 combat / law-enforcement training?