NOAA, partners predict possible record-setting dead zone for Gulf of Mexico NOAA News (Lambert) :-(
Teaching Complete Evolutionary Stories Increases Learning Science Daily (furzy mouse)
‘Real men don’t do poetry’: Israeli army refuses to let IDF soldier read verses on the radio Independent (Chuck L). Gee, Patton wrote a lot of poetry. Not any of it very good, mind you, but still….
Battle for the planet of the APIs Jeremy Keith. Includes good discussion of the tech giants v. RSS and a more general pattern: how internet technology may be getting worse.
Cat-like robot runs like the wind, on Linux LinuxGizmos (Slashdot)
A.M.A. Recognizes Obesity as a Disease New York Times. Yes, I know this is really about Big Pharma, but…obesity wasn’t common 40 years ago, we’ve had bad changes in diet, stress levels, and lots of weird stuff in the water in microdoses that interact in not well understood ways (and more hormones in food) but we are gonna pathologize it so doctors treat individuals rather than have us look at root causes?
Toxic substance in Fukushima water BBC
The Great Banking Divide Triple Crisis. The view from the BRICs
Broadcaster Fight: Greek Government Barely Avoids Collapse Der Spiegel
The toxic legacy of the Greek crisis Martin Wolf, Financial Times
Banking freeze-up: Vicious circle for Finnish SMEs Paul Jonker-Hoffrén. A good English-language blog on
Finland. This post describes some of the real economy consequences of the banking system freeze up there. If you know of other good blogs in Europe, please let us know in comments.
Banking Commission: Bankers should face jail and lose bonuses Telegraph
Who really runs this place? SpinWatch. On the role of the Big Four accounting firms in tax avoidance in the UK.
Turkish Police Caught Staging Fake Riot By Protesters Jonathan Turley (Chuck L)
Afghanistan: The Beginning Of The End Game Moon of Alabama
Big Brother is Watching You Watch:
NSA director describes surveillance as ‘limited, focused’ in House hearing Guardian
No, NSA Spying Did NOT Prevent a Terror Attack on Wall Street George Washington
Edward Snowden: ‘Being Called a Traitor by Dick Cheney Is the Highest Honor You Can Give an American’ FP Passport
Section 215 Dragnet: Again with the Passive Voice Oversight Marcy Wheeler
Partisans are only Concerned about Government Surveillance When the Other Side is in Charge Jon Walker, Firedoglake (Carol B). In case you needed proof of your suspicion…
#SafeData:
IRS cases were referred to ‘Group 7822’ McClatchy (Lambert)
The F.B.I. Deemed Agents Faultless in 150 Shootings New York Times
NYC May Eventually Require Residents To Compost Food Scraps In Citywide Program Consumerist
How Shell is trying to send a chill through activist groups across the country Phil Pradford, Firedoglake (Carol B)
VINCENT REINHART: There’s A Fundamental Flaw In The Message The Fed Is Trying To Send Clusterstock
If Bernanke really shakes the tree, half the world may fall out Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph
Markets Insight: It’s hard to write a happy ending to ‘QE’ story John Plender, Financial Times
Residential construction recovery has a long way to go Sober Look
Trade Deal Could Stick U.S. With EU’s Bank Bomb Simon Johnson, Bloomberg
Deloitte banned for StanChart ‘violations’ Financial Times. This is really important. Lawsky shows you can hit firms that provide air cover for bad corporate behavior where it hurts them, in their wallet.
Everything is Rigged, Vol. 9,713: This Time, It’s Currencies Matt Taibbi (Chuck L)
Bank of America whistle-blower’s bombshell: “We were told to lie” Dave Dayen, Salon
Antidote du jour:
137 comments
Comments are closed.
Obesity—Weird Stuff.
“…weird stuff in the water in microdoses that interact in not well understood ways…”
Well, maybe those ways are WELL UNDERSTOOD by AGRIBIZ. These chemical agents can interact in ways beneficial to AGRIBIZ, such as creating more of a desire for the “food” containing the agents. So, an agent alone may have been studied but not agents combined, except by AGRIBIZ. Think BIG TOBACCO which manipulated cigarette chemical contents to create more desire for the product without, of course, public knowledge.
The ‘root causes’ comment is right on.
And it’s the same with government spending MMT-style.
That misses the point like treating obesity as a disease does.
The real cause is wealth inequality.
We need to tax the 0.01% now, and go to GDP sharing after that.
Everything, bad science, fraud, corruption…everything goes back to greed.
If we guarantee that whatever any one of us does, we all get the same share of the result, that is, the same share of GDP, all of that bad stuff will go away.
We, then, will get everyone doing what xy (my new word of ‘he or she’) is really compassionate about (I know a lot of hedge fund managers’ real love is poetry – just like a lot of dictators).
This way, we will have more poets and, hopefully, through sheer volume, the world will see better poetry than what we are getting today.
Oh, and xy is pronounced like ‘shy.’
Real men don’t do poetry. I think Chairman Mao and a number of the old Communist Guards were pretty proficient in writing poetry. Not sure what the definition of “real men” is but if it somewhat involves the ability to take harsh beatings, then the Long Walk, etc should certainly qualify.
Stalin wrote lots and lots of poetry (anonymously) before he became dictator, in his native Georgian language (the country, of course).
He didnt want it to hurt his image, so it wasnt known that he was the author of those poems until a few decades after his death.
They were actually apparently quite good: although they were written anonymously, a few of them were taught in schools in Georgia (the country) for a few decades. It wasnt top class Georgian poetry, but it was the kind of B class poetry that you sometimes read in school.
Im pretty sure that whatever the definition of real men is… It probably includes Stalin, for better or for worse.
Bolaño’s, “Estrella Distante” (Distant Star) provides a solid literary treatment of a fascist poet and also a range of poets on the left. The fascist poet is particularly nauseating and psychotic.
I’m not exactly sure what the long walk has to do with beatings, but I’ll pass along one little known fact:
The most interesting part about the Chinese long walk was that for Mao, there was little walking involved – he was carried for most of the distance in a sedan chair.
(There are those who claim the long walk never actually happened, but that’s a separate issue.)
It says something about leadership in human society.
Well Pushkin kept fighting duels – which proved to be a mistake.
And Byron was heading to the war.
Byron was sort of in a war, training the Greeks to fight the Turks.
He died of disease and not bullets though. Poor bastard.
I don’t know about Bryon, but I like Sartre.
His play, No Exit, was dedicated to the Fed.
No Exit.
A few I enjoy..
“There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.”
“I know that two and two make four – and should be glad to prove it too if I could – though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 and 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure.”
“But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.”
~Byron
and of course my favorite
History, with all her volumes vast, hath but one page”
~Byron
Oh, and what about Rimbaud?
Wallace Stevens, whose poetry some find difficult, was very transparent in his sayings gleaned from letters and lectures. Here are two snippets from a time before commercial TV and a NY city long gone:
“Democritus plucked his eye out because he could not look at a woman without thinking of her as a woman. If he had read a few of our novels, he would have torn himself to pieces.”
“New York is a field of tireless and antagonistic interests undoubtedly fascinating but horribly unreal. Everybody is looking at everybody else a foolish crowd walking on mirrors.”
A REAL MAN
Men are of two kinds, and he
Was of the kind I’d like to be.
Some preach their virtues, and a few
Express their lives by what they do.
That sort was he. No flowery phrase
Or glibly spoken words of praise
Won friends for him. He wasn’t cheap
Or shallow, but his course ran deep,
And it was pure. You know the kind.
Not many in a life you find
Whose deeds outrun their words so far
That more than what they seem they are.
There are two kinds of lies as well:
The kind you live, the ones you tell.
Back through his years from age to youth
He never acted one untruth.
Out in the open light he fought
And didn’t care what others thought
Nor what they said about his fight
If he believed that he was right.
The only deeds he ever hid
Were acts of kindness that he did.
What speech he had was plain and blunt.
His was an unattractive front.
Yet children loved him; babe and boy
Played with the strength he could employ,
Without one fear, and they are fleet
To sense injustice and deceit.
No back door gossip linked his name
With any shady tale of shame.
He did not have to compromise
With evil-doers, shrewd and wise,
And let them ply their vicious trade
Because of some past escapade.
Men are of two kinds, and he
Was of the kind I’d like to be.
No door at which he ever knocked
Against his manly form was locked.
If ever man on earth was free
And independent, it was he.
No broken pledge lost him respect,
He met all men with head erect,
And when he passed, I think there went
A soul to yonder firmament
So white, so splendid and so fine
It came almost to God’s design.
— Edgar Guest
Very interesting, Stalin, Patton, et al…
I wonder if NSA contractors do poetry?
I hope so.
My belief, as I am never too tired to point out, is that we are all artists.
It’s not about whether your poetry is good or bad, it’s about you engage yourself in being creative…writing something or doing something that has meaning to you, that is FROM YOU, MADE BY YOU and ABOUT YOU.
Art is not about the fake Dali you have on your family room.
If that’s the case, the 0.01% are the most artistic people in the world.
Michael Hastings the rolling stone/buzzfeed journalist has died in a car crash.
Michael Hastings – journalists pay tribute to ‘fearless’ war correspondent
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jun/19/michael-hastings-war-correspondent-killed
he died in a single car crash.I’ll miss his no BS style of reporting.
drive safe Scahill!
local reports
1 Killed In Solo-Vehicle Crash In Hollywood
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/06/18/1-killed-in-solo-vehicle-crash-in-hollywood/
Journalist Michael Hastings dies in L.A. car crash
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-michael-hastings-dies-car-crash-20130618,0,7611310.story
damit…RIP Michael
Greenwald announced this before Hastings’ death, but he will not be traveling to the U.S. to speak at this year’s Socialism 2013 conference in Chicago.
I wasn’t familiar with his writing, but I read his reporting was largely responsible for Gen McCrystal’s removal.
The US military/CIA/NSA network got revenge.
With the peculiar one-car crash scenario (suggesting an explosive in or on the car), I have no doubt that this was a retaliatory assasination.
From Democracy Now:
At the time of the broadcast, there was “an ongoing lawsuit against the FBI to prevent it from destroying evidence that could contain the bomber’s DNA.”
Scott Noble’s latest film, Counter-Intelligence, has a segment dedicated to how US government assasins have been trained and deployed. The portion that speaks to this begins here:
According to Noble, US black ops, that is those in the employ of the US government, don’t do many of these killings themselves any more, but contract them out to mercenaries beholden to the black ops. As he explains, this gives the US government another layer of plausible deniability.
Re: Hastings car crash
According to witnesses, not only did the car explode into flames upon impact, but the motor flew about 60 feet from the car–maybe the Mercedes Benz model that he was driving needs to be recalled?
The key would be to do some forensics on the car for signs of a bomb. But if what you say is true, this car will be totally destroyed before (or to prevent) any serious examination.
Tragic, but cant recall F=MA…
Assuming this was a newerish MB, if it launched it’s engine it was surely a fatal deceleration.
The dark side of all the contemporary adaptive suspension technology/driving aids available on highline (or even intermediate line) cars these days is that it allows drivers to exceed conditions/skill, consequently the driver doesnt necessarily have the satisfaction of feedback before the vehicle completely looses it.
It would be worthwhile as an object lesson to know if the poor bloke was on his cellphone.
Unfortunately great skill as an independent journalist does not necessarily transfer to great skill as a driver. Certainly the accident will be investigated and hopefully the sequence of events leading up to the fatality are clearly established.
Holy crap. Thanks for posting this news. blatant car bombing. truely terrible. Maybe Mercedes Benz will be interested in funding the investigation since he was driving a brand new one that blew up, i don’t suppose there’s going to be a national recall for that model. If anyone has not looked at these links, please do so; the “bomb” factor is unquestionable.
And if you’re not familiar with Judi Bari, who won her case against the FBI posthumously, please google her. She was an incredible orator and activist. She united loggers and environmentalists against a rabid corporate raider up here in the Pacfic northwest. very smart lady, tragic loss.
bllsht
Link Please
Lets start w/ ANY plausible linky for the root claim: blatant car bombing
I’ll go w/ Mr. Occam for the moment until evidence suggest otherwise.
Speeding at 4:30 AM + Hauling Ass through a big LA intersection + funneling into a Boulevard (curbed grassy median w/ trees) from a wide intersection = tunnel vision and an accumulation of circumstances that can add up to a bad ending.
So far, File with: Henri Paul
Maybe someone, say an undercover Swiss banker, put something in his body.
Maybe he thought he was being chased or haunted.
We wont go into what may have been going through my head on a few occasions when still up at ~4:30am
I agree with Tarzie that “journalists should be calling for an investigation into his death.”
Comments from two witnesses interviewed by KTLA 5:
His body was unrecognizable.
If it’s an attack on an innocent American, it’s an attack on America.
“..A witness, whose workshirt indicates he is an employee of Alsco textiles at 900 N. Highland named Jose, says he saw Hastings’ car moving at an extraordinarily fast speed coming down Highland from Santa Monica Blvd., which would mean the car was traveling south. According to Jose’s description, the vehicle may have gone out of control while crossing Melrose Ave…”
Ever drive in LA?
Yesterday on NPR’s Marketplace Morning Report, some woman (can’t recall her name) was discussing Bernanke’s eminent exit. Towards the end of the segment, she shocked me with this statement:
“The chairman has been making less than minimum wage, with all the hours he’s been putting in.”
Uh…excuse me. I did the math, and even working 12 hours per day, 7 days a week he’s still making $45/hour. Maybe that’s below minimum for bankers?
Looking for a link to yesterday’s program (which I couldn’t find), I came across this on Marketplace’s website (which is run by WAMU, coincidently):
So it’s Foamy or the misogynist, with Yellen pulling up the rear. Yea!
FWIW: $199,700.00/$7.25$($/hr) = 27,544 (hr/yr) or 75.4 hrs/day
Mr. Bernanke should spend more time at home.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jun/18/more-global-super-rich
“The number of “high net worth individuals” climbed by 10% in 2012, taking the total worldwide to 12m.
[The richest] 110,000 people are worth $30m or more [each], and hold assets worth more than $16tn between them.
A middle group of just over 1 million people, the “mid-tier millionaires”, held $10tn-worth of assets between them.
And a much larger group of 10.8m people, which the report refers to as the “millionaires next door”, held assets worth $1m-$3m.”
—
Germany leans on EU states to weaken car emissions law -Germany has stepped up the pressure on governments to water down limits on vehicle emissions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/18/germany-eu-car-emissions-law
“[M]aking less-polluting cars is costly and restricts profit margins, which is why major German manufacturers want to delay the stricter rules.
The legal changes demanded by Berlin would allow luxury makers to continue selling more powerful – and profitable – models in Europe after 2020, when the new EU emission limits will take effect.
Under the plan, carmakers would be allowed to carry over credits to pollute that were accrued before the new rules kick in. Known as supercredits, these permits are earned if manufacturers make some very low-emissions vehicles, such as electric cars, which German firms are making to meet a separate national target.”
Yves, I’m still having major problems with your new website. On the Links page, the pictures aren’t downloading. I did an experiment, and after 3 minutes, all the ad pictures and avatars still hadn’t downloaded. The strange script is still popping up on the Links page from time to time, also. Worst of all, trying to exit the website from any of the pages freezes up my computer. The only way I have to exit NC now is to completely shut down my internet connection. I don’t think this has been a change for the better.
Yikes! What OS and browser vsion are you using? And what type of Internet connection do you have?
Windows XP SP3, fully updated. IE8, also fully updated. High speed DSL. As someone mentioned the other day, only at The Guardian do I encounter the occasional script warning. I’ve also noticed that Mother Jones and HuffPo can freeze up my computer, but otherwise have no problems anywhere else on the net.
Try a version of Opera that will work on your system
Thanks for the recommendation. I LOVE Opera! Never tried it before. A browser for adults!
Many web pages have problems that can be averted by clicking on the Compatibility View button located just to the right of the address bar.
The button looks like a picture of a page, torn in half, the outline is green.
good reccomendation
its been difficult refreshing pages without being knocked off…yesterday i received emails from readers that sometimes can’t open the site.
im using firefox)
Try google chrome. It solved my viewing problems.
never ‘ )
hey, I’m no fan either. But it worked, and i need my n/c fix.
Have you emptied your cache?
How about Firefox?
i sweep dump clean daily due to all the stk sites i run
i have been hanging up on huffpost the last few months
the snags here/nc seem to iron out as the day progresses
“..Have you emptied your cache?..”
:oO
Yves, would your mother be proud to hear you talk that way?
Chromium Browser.. it may be useful information that browsers use layout engines.
Webkit layout engine and its forks (browser specific versions) are used by Chrome, Opera, and Safari
Gecko layout engine is used by Mozilla and linux browsers.
Internet explorer uses Trident, I just started web-dev so dont get me started on IE, I have no praise.
I can easily access the main page. Getting to secondary pages linked from the main page is now often a lottery. Sometimes a couple attempts to get the page to come up. And same problem when going from the “links” page to linked articles. It is frustrating. Windows Vista, not sure what browser version.
When did you last reboot? I couldn’t open it at all at first, and the problem was completely my browser. It was fine when I tried a different one and also when I closed and restarted my regular browser program. Have you tried a different browser?
BTW, the VPN article is a decent article, though I don’t believe it mentions the necessity to purchase a static IP address. This might be a financial consideration for some.
As for me a VPN is the only way to go.
Woah, I didn’t expect you to put a picture up of a couple of racoons mating. Very edgy. My level of respect for your picture selecting abilities just went up a notch.
Racoonie style?
Hey! They’re not mating. One is holding the other so that it can steal food from the plate.
NC is committed to the highest standards of social modesty.
If your truly hungry (or you are a raccoon), its not stealing
Re: Banking Commission: Bankers should face threat of jail and loss of bonuses
Doesn’t the UK already have criminal statutes against fraud and wouldn’t simply enforcing those laws already on the books accomplish the same end as creating another law? What does creating another law that likely will not be enforced accomplish, exactly? And isn’t it playing down the offense by terming the behavior “reckless” instead of “predatory”?
Imagine you live in a community with a drunk-driving problem. People are getting soused behind the wheel and wreaking all sorts of havoc but the police won’t pull anybody over. So the community decides to pass a law against “reckless driving” to combat the problem. Mightn’t a better idea be to find out why the cops aren’t doing their jobs and fix that problem?
While it’s good to see people of some official capacity owning up to the scope of the problem, passing another law is a knee-jerk reaction, istm, and might well end up proving to be little more than stage-dressing. Let’s hope their ‘reckless banking’ law, if it becomes a reality, doesn’t just serve as cover for politicians to say, “look, we tried to do something…we passed a law!”
The bonus withholding and clawbacks are better, but I think fixing the bank auditing system to remove conflicts of interest (as much as possible), has to be at the top of any banking reform to-do list.
“Doesn’t the UK already have criminal statutes against fraud and wouldn’t simply enforcing those laws already on the books accomplish the same end as creating another law?”
Yes, of course it does. This is pure BS.
Good news everyone! Our fascist bully of a President can’t even attract a crowd in Berlin*! I wonder who is fitting the bill for the President’s ego trip.
*Apologies to Germans, but I couldn’t resist the pointing out the on the nose symbolism.
Uhmm…it turns out there were no native, regular Germans in the crowd. It was an invitation only event. (Probably folks from US military families and crony politicos.)
Ah, it was one of those events where they couldn’t ensure a friendly crowd, so they brought people who didn’t want to get assigned to the army base in Nome.
Nothing that involves the POTUS and it’s Pretorian guard is extemporaneous.
OTOH, at least an informal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism is worth considering.
“I would much rather be here today debating this point than trying to explain how we failed to prevent another 9/11.
-General Keith Alexander
This disgraceful 9-11 strawman was later referenced by Congressmen and blasted thru the media. It is an insult to the memories of those who died in the 9-11 attacks and the latest in a litany of half-truths and spin that we have seen from elected and unelected officials.
9-11 happened largely because of a lack of vigilence coordination among various Agencies as described in the 9-11 Commission Report:
The 9-11 Commission Report (see, in particular, section 8.2 “Late Leads”)
Also:
FBI Was Warned About Flight Schools
Did the FBI Ignore 9-11 Warnings?
The Boston Marathon bombing also happened because of warnings that were not heeded – NSA surveillance did NOT prevent that attack.
Almost all terr0rist attacks have been, or could have been, prevented using traditional law enforcement. The FBI had leads before 9-11 that, if followed up in a timely manner, would’ve prevented the attacks. Sensible steps taken after 9-11 to improve inter-Agency information sharing and coordination and airport security do much more to keep us safe than NSA spying. We don’t have to compromise our Constitutional rights to be protected. That is a false choice; and a choice that Americans reject if the reaction to the Boston Marathon bombing is any indication:
Bombings Heighten Runners’ Commitment to 2014 Boston Marathon
The NSA hasn’t met the burden of proof necessary to infringe on our Constitutional right of privacy. What they HAVE done is demonstrate that our policing is much better than policing overseas. More than 80% of the attacks that they help to prevent were overseas.
Those who support pervasive surveillance hype the risk of terr0rism but tell us little of how the risk of tyranny is managed or contained. How are FISA Judges selected? How does Congress KNOW that NSA respects the limits that are set? What information is shared with Contractors and Allied Intelligence services – and how is it safeguarded?
The minimal additional security from NSA’s pervasive surveillance does not justify the risk of misuse and potential for undermining of our Democracy. This is especially true when NSA over-reaches and over-states the case for surveillance; when a President that vowed to restore civil liberties is ‘OK’ with his Director of National Intelligence lying to Congress; and when elected Representatives act more like NSA cheerleaders than watchdogs.
The victims of the 9-11 attacks lived and died in an America that cherished individual rights that are enshrined in the Constitutional. I have no doubt that they would’ve wanted their loved ones to continue to live in THAT America, not an America of secret presidential findings, secret courts, and secret files on innocent Americans. To use their loss to promote an agenda that puts those values at risk is simply wrong. And very troubling.
@ Jackrabbit
It is also important to keep in mind that one of the principle functions of these clandestine agencies is to manufacture psueo-intelligence that serves the interests of the corporatocracy.
A wonderfully detailed analysis of how this is done is the video documentary produced by BBC which recounts how the intelligence agencies manufactured the “intelligence” that was used to justify the Iraq War:
Hannah Arendt eloquently summed up how it works in “Lying in Politics”:
USA Today is not buying what they’re selling. Editorial:
Surveillance history belies “trust us”: Our View
And nearly two-thirds of the public want Congress to hold open hearings on government surveillance programs according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll that was published today.
73 percent of those identifying as Democrat were for the surveillance (because they trust Obama? or tribal knee-jerk?).
Journalism much more informative and braver than whistleblowers:
AA Exposes Bush’s ‘Big Lie’: Flight 11 DID NOT FLY on 911!
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
American Airlines is the source for information that AA Flights 11 (North Tower) and 77 (Pentagon) did not fly on 911. If neither flew on 911, the Bush ‘theory’ is a lie. If the Bush ‘theory’ is a lie, there remains only one explanation and that is: 911 was an inside job given a green-light by Bush himself.
These flights are critical to the the government’s crumbling cover up!
(SNIP)
The Bush Conspiracy Theory is impossible! And it is a Lie!
(SNIP)
No wreckage traceable to a 757 was ever found at the Pentagon.
One would not expect to find wreckage of a flight never flown. What is significant with respect to the changes to Wiki, with respect to BTS/NTSB records is that the burden of proof is now placed upon Bushco to prove its theory. Bush et al should be compelled to prove the official theory –or face charges resulting from the probable cause that Bush himself and high ranking members of his administration participated in the crimes of mass murder and high treason!
Photos of an engine rotor appear to depict an engine used in the Global Hawk, a payload carrying missile that was, according to Britain’s International Television News, flown from the US to Australia completely by remote control. “A robot plane has made aviation history by becoming the first unmanned aircraft to fly across the Pacific Ocean.”
Britain’s ITN continued:
“The Global Hawk, a jet-powered aircraft with a wingspan equivalent to a Boeing 737, flew from Edwards Air Force Base in California and landed late on Monday at the Royal Australian Air Force base at Edinburgh, in South Australia state… It flies along a pre-programmed flight path, but a pilot monitors the aircraft during its flight via a sensor suite which provides infra-red and visual images.”
ITN quoted Australian Global Hawk manager Rod Smith: “The aircraft essentially flies itself, right from takeoff, right through to landing, and even taxiing off the runway.”
‘The Missile that Struck this Building’ –Don Rumsfeld
The Global Hawk is a much better candidate for what Rumsfeld called ‘…the missile that struck this building’ than a 757. Here’s what you need to know about the Pentagon.
Only minutes after the strike, [see pic above] there is no sign of an airliner at all!!
No wreckage traceable to a 757 was ever recovered.
Only ONE engine rotor (seen in photos) was recovered! This rotor is about one third the diameter of a 757 rotor, i.e about the size of a U.S. Global Hawk rotor and can be traced to a U.S. Global Hawk.
A 757 has two rotors, each of which are nearly three times the size of the SINGLE rotor located at the Pentagon. Again –only one rotor was found in Pentagon debris.
Engine rotors are made of a Steel/Titanium alloy to withstand high temps inside jet engines and would have been found had they been there.
Flight 77 could not and did not crash into the Pentagon. That may be because Flt 77 did not fly on 911. According to airline records, Flight 77 had been mothballed and had not flown for some 6 months prior to 911.
No Arabs Were on Board 77
If no Arabs were on board Flight 77, Bush’s theory must be trashed! There is not only no evidence to support the conspiracy theory that Arab terrorists hijacked 77. There is every reason to believe that none ever got on board. There are no Arabs on the only Pentagon ‘evidence’ that is admissible in court: the ‘Official Autopsy Report’ of Pentagon victims.
The autopsy report was released to Dr. Olmsted in response to his FOIA request. In a ‘neat’ cover-up, a 911 memorial lists all victims of whatever it was that crashed into the Pentagon. At the same time, 77 victims were said to have been buried at Arlington National Cemetery. All are Pentagon employees! Where, then, are the passengers buried? I would be very surprised to learn that there were passengers on a flight that cannot be proven to have existed.
Whatever crashed into the Pentagon was described by a witnesses as looking like a ‘hump-backed whale’. Rumsfeld himself called it a missile: Below: a US Global Hawk painted to look like an AA airliner. It is both a ‘missile’ and it also has a hump back! It ‘fills the bill’.
The photo below does not purport to be the craft that would ultimately crash into the Pentagon. It merely demonstrates how easily such a ‘paint job’ could dupe those who are 1) not experts on aircraft
2) saw it only for a second or less as it scooted across the Pentagon lawn as NO 757 could possibly have done 3) were, in any case, caught off guard.
Recognizing lies for what they are is a part of the process of growing up! America, it is time to grow up! It is time to confront this heinous pack of lies! It is time to insist that the Obama administration begin a REAL investigation of 911.
Pardon the double posting again. Need to add link for above and below posting:
http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2012/01/aa-exposes-bushs-big-lie-flight-11-did.html
AA Exposes Bush’s ‘Big Lie’: Flight 11 DID NOT FLY on 911!
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
Journalist more informative and braver than whistleblowers:
AA Exposes Bush’s ‘Big Lie’: Flight 11 DID NOT FLY on 911!
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
American Airlines is the source for information that AA Flights 11 (North Tower) and 77 (Pentagon) did not fly on 911. If neither flew on 911, the Bush ‘theory’ is a lie. If the Bush ‘theory’ is a lie, there remains only one explanation and that is: 911 was an inside job given a green-light by Bush himself.
These flights are critical to the the government’s crumbling cover up!
(SNIP)
The Bush Conspiracy Theory is impossible! And it is a Lie!
(SNIP)
No wreckage traceable to a 757 was ever found at the Pentagon.
One would not expect to find wreckage of a flight never flown. What is significant with respect to the changes to Wiki, with respect to BTS/NTSB records is that the burden of proof is now placed upon Bushco to prove its theory. Bush et al should be compelled to prove the official theory –or face charges resulting from the probable cause that Bush himself and high ranking members of his administration participated in the crimes of mass murder and high treason!
Photos of an engine rotor appear to depict an engine used in the Global Hawk, a payload carrying missile that was, according to Britain’s International Television News, flown from the US to Australia completely by remote control. “A robot plane has made aviation history by becoming the first unmanned aircraft to fly across the Pacific Ocean.”
Britain’s ITN continued:
“The Global Hawk, a jet-powered aircraft with a wingspan equivalent to a Boeing 737, flew from Edwards Air Force Base in California and landed late on Monday at the Royal Australian Air Force base at Edinburgh, in South Australia state… It flies along a pre-programmed flight path, but a pilot monitors the aircraft during its flight via a sensor suite which provides infra-red and visual images.”
ITN quoted Australian Global Hawk manager Rod Smith: “The aircraft essentially flies itself, right from takeoff, right through to landing, and even taxiing off the runway.”
‘The Missile that Struck this Building’ –Don Rumsfeld
The Global Hawk is a much better candidate for what Rumsfeld called ‘…the missile that struck this building’ than a 757. Here’s what you need to know about the Pentagon.
Only minutes after the strike, [see pic above] there is no sign of an airliner at all!!
No wreckage traceable to a 757 was ever recovered.
Only ONE engine rotor (seen in photos) was recovered! This rotor is about one third the diameter of a 757 rotor, i.e about the size of a U.S. Global Hawk rotor and can be traced to a U.S. Global Hawk.
A 757 has two rotors, each of which are nearly three times the size of the SINGLE rotor located at the Pentagon. Again –only one rotor was found in Pentagon debris.
Engine rotors are made of a Steel/Titanium alloy to withstand high temps inside jet engines and would have been found had they been there.
Flight 77 could not and did not crash into the Pentagon. That may be because Flt 77 did not fly on 911. According to airline records, Flight 77 had been mothballed and had not flown for some 6 months prior to 911.
No Arabs Were on Board 77
If no Arabs were on board Flight 77, Bush’s theory must be trashed! There is not only no evidence to support the conspiracy theory that Arab terrorists hijacked 77. There is every reason to believe that none ever got on board. There are no Arabs on the only Pentagon ‘evidence’ that is admissible in court: the ‘Official Autopsy Report’ of Pentagon victims.
The autopsy report was released to Dr. Olmsted in response to his FOIA request. In a ‘neat’ cover-up, a 911 memorial lists all victims of whatever it was that crashed into the Pentagon. At the same time, 77 victims were said to have been buried at Arlington National Cemetery. All are Pentagon employees! Where, then, are the passengers buried? I would be very surprised to learn that there were passengers on a flight that cannot be proven to have existed.
Whatever crashed into the Pentagon was described by a witnesses as looking like a ‘hump-backed whale’. Rumsfeld himself called it a missile: Below: a US Global Hawk painted to look like an AA airliner. It is both a ‘missile’ and it also has a hump back! It ‘fills the bill’.
The photo below does not purport to be the craft that would ultimately crash into the Pentagon. It merely demonstrates how easily such a ‘paint job’ could dupe those who are 1) not experts on aircraft
2) saw it only for a second or less as it scooted across the Pentagon lawn as NO 757 could possibly have done 3) were, in any case, caught off guard.
Recognizing lies for what they are is a part of the process of growing up! America, it is time to grow up! It is time to confront this heinous pack of lies! It is time to insist that the Obama administration begin a REAL investigation of 911.
-General Keith Alexander was promoted/appointed by Rumsfeld. So shouldn’t he know about
‘The Missile that Struck this Building’ –Don Rumsfeld
And shouldn’t he know also about the 2+ Trillion Dollars reported missing from the Pentagon by Rumsfeld…reported the day before 9-11-01?
Greenwald describes FISA Court and NSA Oversight
Lots of detail and a better understanding of the processes involved. On its face, it appears that there is virtually no independent oversight and much leeway for abuse. A “must read” for those who are following this issue.
@ “Teaching Complete Evolutionary Stories Increases Learning”
And did they teach how evolutionary science has been corrupted by the likes of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Pinker so that it conforms to neoclassical economics and a neo-liberal political agenda?
Pinker’s arguments, just like those of Dawkins, boil down to an abiding faith in genetic determinism. Pinker’s book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, as Analee Newitz explains in “Right-wing Darwinism,” is “a kind of rejoinder to the work of pundits like the late Stephen Jay Gould, who argued that human beings are as much a product of their environments as they are of their genes.” And as Newitz goes on to conclude, in Pinker’s “portrait of human nature” in which “all of human nature is, in fact, biological,” there “was not room for social justice” nor for structural factors to play any role in determining or explaining social and economic realities. “There was only the status quo.”
This abiding faith in genetic determinism is also what drives Dawkins’ selfish gene theory, which is merely the regurgitation for a popular audience of the average effects in population genetics theory refined decades earlier by theoretical biologists such as Seawall Wright, Ronald Fisher, and J.B.S Haldane. “Average effects become selfish genes and individuals became lumbering robots controlled by their genes.” (David Sloan Wilson, “Beyond Demonic Memes”).
What is amazing is how successful Pinker and Dawkins have been in passing off their politics as “science” — the enormous success enjoyed by what Stephen Toulmin in Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernism called “cosmopolitcal arguments.” As Toulmin explains, all the way from Plato down to folks like Pinker and Dawkins:
You might enjoy reading Richard Lewontin’s It Ain’t Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions, in which Lewontin raises many good questions about genetic determinism and the attempts to explain biology as a branch of physics and chemistry.
From my own experience working as someone trained as a chemist and lawyer with molecular biologists and genomics researchers, I take everything (as they usually do in their more candid discussions) with a grain of salt. Most researchers in this field understand the oversimplifications of their texts and media pronouncements.
I’m not sure I buy the sort of conspiracy theory offered by Tolumin. Yes, the tendency to describe social order as a necessary results of some physical process is a hallmark of modernism, and I agree it has been used as a justification to limit democracy. But I think that reflects the inherent limits of using the physical sciences as a cause-and-effect model for social and biological questions and their unwarranted extension by those who are apologists for the existing power structure. (Think: Spencer’s attempt to treat societies as biological organisms subject to his interpretation of Darwinian selection.) I do not think it’s a planned attack by scientists on democracy.
You seem to fall into the same camp with Franc¸ois Haas, who theorized:
I fall more in line with the global systems theorists, whom I suppose have taken Marx’s structural critique under their belt:
It should go without saying, however, that I believe that the Marxists themselves should be placed under the microscope of the Marxist structural critique.
I don’t see thow this follows from what I wrote. Just becuase I mentioned Spencer doesn’t mean I agree with him. And I thought I was clear that I have found many scientists far more skeptical than appears in the press. And please don’t try to label my views from my description of what I have experienced; if you want my personal views, then ask for them.
What I tried to convey was the idea that those in power tend to gravitate to ideas that can be used to justify that power, regardless of the views of those who created those ideas. As for your systems theory, from my direct experience in scientific research I think the interaction between scientists and society is far more complex than either camp you present.
~ David Lentini says:
So scientists’ public statements don’t square with their private beliefs? Why do you think that’s so? Why would scientists give the public assurances about things that in private they are skeptical about?
~ David Lentini says:
Oh, I think when you blasted Toulmin’s conclusions as a “sort of conspiracy theory,” you left no doubt about what your personal views are. You then follow with more statements to exculpate scientists. The gist of your argument goes something like this: Scientists are merely involved in a disinterested quest for truth, but sometimes they make mistakes which just happen to be useful to the rich and powerful. But none of this is intentional. Science and scientists are above the corrupting influence of money and power, and these are honest mistakes. (Or in Jesus’ words: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”) You then conclude with this: “I do not think it’s a planned attack by scientists on democracy.” But isn’t that the same thing that Haas said, that scientists formulated racial theories that later informed Nazi doctrine? What Haas does not point out, though, is that when these racial theories were first formulated in the 18th century, they were very useful to elites in Great Britain, the United States and Spain. (For an in-depth analysis of this, there’s Maria Elena Martinez’ excellent book on the subject, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion and Gender in Colonial Mexico.)
Did you ever stop to wonder why some scientists, and especially those who formulate theories which are useful to the inordinately rich and powerful, achieve overnight rock star status, fame and fortune, and their theories become all but axiomatic? Richard Dawkins is the perfect example. As Athena Andreadis writes in the article Saddam Smith linked:
And yet Dawkins became an overnight sensation peddling this nonsense, which he still trumpets as sure truth. And you really expect us to believe Dawkins doesn’t know what the score is?
~ David Lentini says:
But you also convey the notion that scientists don’t intentionally set out to custom tailor ideas for the rich and powerful. And what happens to theories that are not useful to the status quo? They of course can eventually triumph, but it is a slow and uphill battle, fraught with frustration and often times rejection and obscurity during the lifetimes of their creators. Sometimes their creators are eliminated, which was often the case in the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. In an insane world, after all, it is the sane man who appears insane.
Racism, of course, had been around long before the Enlightenment. What was new with the Enlightenment was that the justification for racism had changed. Before it had been the Bible, but with the advent of Modernism and the demise of the authority of religion, a scientific justification had to be found. As Maria Elena Martinez explains:
This is worth a read too:
http://hplusmagazine.com/2010/04/20/miranda-wrongs-reading-too-much-genome/
It certainly was well worth the read.
Thank you so much for the link.
Agreed! :-)
late Stephen Jay Gould, who argued that human beings are as much a product of their environments as they are of their genes.”
mmm… more like (my) possible behaviors are ultimately framed by the limits of (my) genes. Otherwise, if I were “as much a product of my environment… as (my) genes” I would have at least cultivated a taste for live fish and and an ability to hold my breath for ~20 minutes.
“.. Our genetic makeup permits a wide range of behaviors—from Ebenezer Scrooge before to Ebenezer Scrooge after. I do not believe that the miser hoards through opportunist genes or that the philanthropist gives because nature endowed him with more than the normal complement of altruist genes. Upbringing, culture, class, status, and all the intangibles that we call “free will,” determine how we restrict our behaviors from the wide spectrum—extreme altruism to extreme selfishness—that our genes permit. ..”
~SJ Gould
Anyone interested in what Dawkins actually thinks should take a read of this transcript:
http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/transcript/dawk-frame.html
Or, horror of horrors, actually read one of his books.
@ thesystemoftheworld
Did you even take the time to read that transcript before you linked to it?
Dawkins, for instance, asserts that “living organisms and their bodies are best seen as machines programmed by the genes.” But isn’t that exactly how his theory has been described above?
Later Dawkins says “Nature really is red in tooth and claw.”
“Red in tooth and claw” is a reference to the natural world in which predatory animals unsentimentally cover their teeth and claws with the blood of their prey as they kill and devour them. Of course anyone with two working brain cells knows this is empirically untrue when it comes to humans. Human beings are not like other animals, and most humans (although not all) experience a whole complement of sentiments that other animals don’t feel. Most humans, for instance, feel empathy. And as Joan B. Silk writes in “The evolution of cooperation in primate groups,” “Strong reciprocity in humans seems rooted in a deep sense of fairness and concern for justice that is extended even toward strangers, but we have no systematic evidence that other animals have similar sensibilities.”
These are gut human sentiments that do not require us “to use our big brains, use our conscience intelligence, to depart from the dictates of the selfish genes,” as Dawkins asserts.
Dawkins never answers the question as to where these “big brains” that are supposed to save us from our selfish genes come from. He says “when brains became sufficiently big they took off in other directions, which no longer have really any connection with gene survival at all.” So our big brains can’t be explained by evolutionary theory? Imagine that.
Sr Mexico,
Link your evidence that our other mamalian brethern dont feel empathy or emotion( sentiments). A rather exuberent claim
humans. Human beings are not like other animals, and most humans (although not all) experience a whole complement of sentiments that other animals don’t feel.
Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/06/links-61913.html#uAUVqSsqbBBRKZLC.99
“I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will. Indeed, I encourage people all the time to do it.”
“Much of the message of my first book, “The Selfish Gene,” was that we must understand what it means to be a gene machine, what it means to be programmed by genes, so that we are better equipped to escape, so that we are better equipped to use our big brains, use our conscience intelligence, to depart from the dictates of the selfish genes and to build for ourselves a new kind of life which as far as I am concerned the more un-Darwinian it is the better, because the Darwinian world in which our ancestors were selected is a very unpleasant world. Nature really is red in tooth and claw. And when we sit down together to argue out and discuss and decide upon how we want to run our societies, I think we should hold up Darwinism as an awful warning for how we should not organize our societies.”
But still, you and Dawkins offer no explanation of where our “free will,” “our big brains” and “our conscience intelligence” that we can use “to depart from the dictates of the selfish genes and to build for ourselves a new kind of life which as far as I am concerned the more un-Darwinian it is the better” come from. If they can’t be explained by Dawkins’ selfish gene evolutionary theory, then how did they get here? Where did they come from? What is their origin?
The only place that I can find where Dawkins addresses these questions is when he says that “when brains became sufficiently big they took off in other directions, which no longer have really any connection with gene survival at all.” So our big brains cannot be explained by Dawkins’ selfish gene theory? What am I missing?
Interesting post on the “political offense exception”…
How Edward Snowden could sidestep extradition http://www.usatoday.com/story/cybertruth/2013/06/19/how-edward-snowden-could-sidestep-extradition/2434335/
On the media’s portrayal of Snowden…
Snowden versus the dragons http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/2013/06/18/snowden-versus-the-dragons/
“we are gonna pathologize it so doctors treat individuals rather than have us look at root causes?”
Most definitely, unfortunately. The highest priority task assigned to the knowledge worker class in the current social system is the creation of strategic unknowing.
How this affects any one individual is quite complicated, but for the class as a whole, it is quite straight-forward.
We now need the special word “whistleblower” for someone who tells the truth in an institutional setting because that is such a departure from the norm. Someday “whistleblowing” will be the norm and we will have a special word for those who collaborate in deception.
Deloitte’s punishment is welcome news but…. it wasn’t so long ago that Arthur Andersen disappeared from the face of the planet. And Jeff Skilling went to jail. It’s hard to believe in the depth of the change of attitudes that happened over only a dozen years.
When he shakes the tree, I am afraid, the tree will tip over.
NSA: surveillance ‘limited, focused”
As in limited to humans and focused on humans.
Again, close-minded, linear thinking precludes them from examining the possibility that animals and/or vegetables can be plotting against us.
Even kids know you can get dogs, chimps and pigeons (just to name a few) to carry messages for you.
Market Insight: It’s hard to write a happy ending to the QE story.
Don’t worry.
It’s a story that will write itself – like all masterpieces.
The raccoons are not in fact mating, but vying for the dish of food. Check out the foot placement.
Be interesting to see what Mercedes have to say re: that car explosion. Glad Glenn will not be coming to the US now. And props to those pointing out that real policework is the answer to foiling terrorism, not Big Brother.
As to obesity being a disease… I suppose it might be for some, I had a friend who waged a losing battle with it, long before the high-fructose corn syrup additions to our food.
By and large though, I’d say we don’t need to look further than our largely sedentary lifestyle in the US.
They are mating while eating..
Ancient Roman Raccoon stock
Obesity was just being overweight 20 years ago. It is the 85th percentile and above for each sex. Nothing has really changed.
In reality, obesity is usually a symptom of an underlying medical condition. It’s a cause of medical conditions, but there’s usually and physical or psychological origin.
Rather than treat the diabetes, liver anoxia, drug use, childhood trauma or other cause, the doctors now have a nice, chronic condition to hang prescriptions upon for decades of the patient’s life. And, declaring it a disease, they’ve declared open season on the whole shelf of pills. Probably another amphetamine.
Right winger blowhards like to parrot Reagan’s government here to help slogan. I’m scared when people who work for Big Pharma start talking about a newly discovered disease.
No, it’s defined now in terms of BMI.
And 1/3 of the adults are now considered to be obese. So it is NOT “85th percentile”
Please don’t make stuff up. There has been a huge increase in overweight and obesity in the US, and that is even AFTER the norms were moved a bit (IIRC 20 years ago).
http://win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/PDFs/stat904z.pdf
All you have to do is watch Woodstock to be gobsmacked by how relatively OBESE Americans have gotten in ~44 years.
What changed?
Try watching American Bandstand or Soul Train on Youtube.
Hmmm, there are at least two (I’m betting quite a few more) way over prescribed psych meds, which cause significant (if not astonishing) weight gain.
I believe prozac was one I had read about and I know for a fact that lithium is another. I know three people who were on lithium who put on an unbelievable amount of weight (two who had previously been very thin, another who had never been considered ‘fat’), while on that medication, then lost it, pretty rapidly, after they went off of it.
All the SSRIs tend to produce a 10-15 pound weight gain in the first year-18 months (Paxil, Zoloft, not just Prozac). Buproprion (Wellbutrin) does not.
My endocrinologist said 1/3 of the women on antidepressants had low testosterone (which will make you depressed, women are hardly ever tested for testosterone because it’s a very pricey test, but not as expensive as begin on SSRIs!)
Doing an [ixquick] search on it, it looks like Seroquel (antipsychotic) – which is infamous for being both misprescribed (off label) and overprescribed, especially to vets (resulting in numerous deaths and a huge lawsuit), the elderly and prisoners (and, I’m betting, Medicaid patients) – also causes significant weight gain.
As you implied above, the pharma and medical and indu$tries are now pathologizing the effect of being overweight rather than address the now numerou$ cau$es of being overweight.
Barbaric.
Re Greece,
and
pretty much says it all. It is pretty funny that Greece the birthplace of democracy has a government so unalterably opposed to it. But considering that Samaras is playing the role of Merkel’s local gauleiter, it’s not surprising.
And possibly the birthplace of writingg, after the discover of Dispilio Tablets, though Tartaria Tablets from Romania might be a few hundred years older.
Have you seen the pictures of Merkel in East Germany when she was Secretary of Propaganda for the communist student movement FJD?:
http://www.politicaymoda.com/2013/05/22/el-pasado-comunista-de-angela-merkel/
State socialism or state capitalism, for an opportunist it’s all the same.
To be fair though Stalinism was ultimately more State Capitalism than it was anything else.
She basically went from being a state capitalist to… A state capitalist.
Not all that surprising a transformation.
Germany’s Supreme Court outlawed electronic voting machines because the computers remove real evidence (paper ballots hand counted in public) on purpose. Germany trusts their people more than the U.S. does and many other so called Democracies.
Given that the e-voting, e-scanning, e-tabulating machines are owned/operated by overt, extreme right-wingers…who operate and count during primaries also…our so called Democrats become more and more Straussian, our so-called Democracy controlled by right-wingers so confident that they can spew lunacy without regard to loss of power.
……..
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8889
By Brad Friedman
Recommended #OWS Demand: Let ALL Citizens 18 and Older Vote, On Paper Ballots, Count Them in Public
I offer the following simple “demand” for consideration by OWS, as this one likely underscores almost every other. Or, at least, without it, all other demands may ultimately be rendered moot.
Every U.S. citizen 18 years of age or older who wishes to vote, gets to vote. Period. Those votes, on hand-marked paper ballots, will be counted publicly, by hand, on Election Night, at the precinct, in front of all observers and video cameras.
RE: Shell
A new frontier in the SLAPP suit so loved by real estate developers and Scientology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation
Possible actions in the future are now just as real as proven actions in the past.
With a compliant or stupid judge, now anyone with enough money can be their own little autocrat. That scary world ‘balance’ occurs later in the article, usually balancing things people have with things the rich want. Meh.
Junk Soup: UBS Unloaded Rotten Securities on Leipzig
An investigation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has revealed for the first time the methods with which the Swiss investment bank UBS sought to palm off bad debt securities on German municipalities. It succeeded in Leipzig.
The American banker couldn’t even pronounce the name of his German client when he appeared for the interview on the morning of Sept. 20, 2012: Kommunale Wasserwerke Leipzig, quite a tongue twister for a Wall Street man. But it wouldn’t make much difference, he reasoned, because hardly anyone in America was likely to have heard of it before.
By the afternoon of the next day, after undergoing 12 hours of questioning by the American financial regulatory agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), John Simon* knew he was mistaken. SEC enforcement division lawyer Andrew H. Feller was in fact very well informed, after having read through emails and call logs, and he knew whom Simon had met in New York, London and South Africa. The SEC attorney could even pronounce the name of the city of Leipzig’s water utility relatively well.
Feller had spent two years investigating the methods Simon had used to develop risky deals involving water treatment plants in the eastern German state of Saxony for UBS, a major Swiss bank. In the end, Leipzig faced potential losses of €300 million ($400 million), joining the ranks of many German municipalities that had lost vast sums of money in complex Wall Street deals.
Were City Managers Duped?
Until now, it was widely felt that local politicians and the managers of their municipal operations often had only themselves to blame. With a mixture of naïveté and greed, they had bought financial products of which they understood neither the names nor the risks they were taking by making those investments.
It is now emerging that international bankers developed aggressive strategies to dispose of toxic securities by selling them to German municipalities. It appears the banks deliberately targeted inexperienced provincial managers and sold them bad deals from which only the banks could profit.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/probe-shows-how-ubs-targeted-junk-securities-at-german-cities-a-906176.html
All-Time Heat Records Broken in . . . Alaska?!
A massive dome of high pressure, sometimes referred to as a “heat dome,” has set up shop over Alaska, bringing all-time record temperatures just a few weeks after parts of the state had a record cold start to spring. In some cases, towns in Alaska were warmer on Monday and Tuesday than most locations in the lower 48 states.
For example, Talkeetna set an all-time high temperature record of 96°F on Monday, smashing its previous mark of 91°F set a day earlier, and previously set in June of 1969. In fact, it was warmer in Talkeetna, which is about 110 miles north of Anchorage, than it was in Miami, based on data from the National Weather Service (NWS). (As Weather Underground’s Christopher Burt notes, there was an unofficial observation of 98°F on Monday, which would rank among the hottest all-time temperature records for the state.)
In Valdez, which sits along the cool waters of Prince William Sound, the temperature reached a remarkable 90°F Monday, beating the previous all-time mark of 87°F. And in Seward, another coastal port, the temperature hit 88°F, breaking the previous all-time high of 87°F that was set on July 4, 1999.
http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/all-time-heat-records-broken-in-alaska-heat-wave-to-continue-16131
Click image to enlarge. Credit: WeatherBell.com.
This would be funny if it weren’t true
THE ONION: Financial Sector Thinks It’s About Ready To Ruin World Again
http://www.theonion.com/articles/financial-sector-thinks-its-about-ready-to-ruin-wo,32865/
holy sark off! this should go into a timecapsule.
‘anything’ that visits whats left of this dear plant, will gain an idea how & who snuffed us out.
http://russeurope.hypotheses.org/
This offers unique comments on Europe economy.
Re: Explainer: What is a virtual private network (VPN)? PhysOrg
Yes, definitely obtain a VPN if you ever plan to use public WiFi (even with your smartphone!). You can purchase a VPN endpoint commercially, or use some advanced home routers to VPN from your laptop/phone back to your home network. And make sure to route ALL traffic over your VPN!
Disable automatic WiFi on your phone! Most iOS devices will connect to unprotected WiFi networks automatically. Someone can easily re-route traffic to their malicious site (e.g. fake bank login screen that simply records your user name and password).
Facebook and Gmail (at least used to) send session data in the clear, so over public WiFi your session can be hijacked and you can lose control over your email, thus lose control over every account that sends it’s password reset link to your email.
Sorry, didn’t finish my thought —
So to avoid hijacked session data, use HTTPS Everywhere and a VPN won’t hurt with that either.
HTTPS Everywhere is a good idea regardless. It’s an add-on to your browser to change every link to use SSL web connections (if they are available). Note that using SSL, others seeing the traffic on the network don’t see your URLs (just servers), so it’s very helpful.
~ David Lentini says:
So scientists’ public statements don’t square with their private beliefs? Why do you think that’s so? Why would scientists give the public assurances about things that in private they are skeptical about?
~ David Lentini says:
Oh, I think when you blasted Toulmin’s conclusions as a “sort of conspiracy theory,” you left no doubt about what your personal views are. You then follow with more statements to exculpate scientists. The gist of your argument goes something like this: Scientists are merely involved in a disinterested quest for truth, but sometimes they make mistakes which just happen to be useful to the rich and powerful. But none of this is intentional. Science and scientists are above the corrupting influence of money and power, and these are honest mistakes. (Or in Jesus’ words: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”) You then conclude with this: “I do not think it’s a planned attack by scientists on democracy.” But isn’t that the same thing that Haas said, that scientists formulated racial theories that later informed Nazi doctrine? What Haas does not point out, though, is that when these racial theories were first formulated in the 18th century, they were very useful to elites in Great Britain, the United States and Spain. (For an in-depth analysis of this, there’s Maria Elena Martinez’ excellent book on the subject, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion and Gender in Colonial Mexico.)
Did you ever stop to wonder why some scientists, and especially those who formulate theories which are useful to the inordinately rich and powerful, achieve overnight rock star status, fame and fortune, and their theories become all but axiomatic? Richard Dawkins is the perfect example. As Athena Andreadis writes in the article Saddam Smith linked:
And yet Dawkins became an overnight sensation peddling this nonsense, which he still trumpets as sure truth. And you really expect us to believe Dawkins doesn’t know what the score is?
~ David Lentini says:
But you also convey the notion that scientists don’t intentionally set out to custom tailor ideas for the rich and powerful. And what happens to theories that are not useful to the status quo? They of course can eventually triumph, but it is a slow and uphill battle, fraught with frustration and often times rejection and obscurity during the lifetimes of their creators. Sometimes their creators are eliminated, which was often the case in the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. In an insane world, after all, it is the sane man who appears insane.
To claim that “The selfish gene concept as presented by reductionists of all stripes is arrant nonsense.” (‘Athena’ Andreatis) is absurd. Aside from any of his other views, Dawkins’ “trumpeted” hypothesis has been taken very seriously by eminent evolutionary biologists. Why has someone like David Sloan Wilson, someone you admire (so do I), spent so much time arguing against it if it is “arrant nonsense?” Athena possibly leaves herself a narrow window of escape. Perhaps she would consider it a legitimate concept if it were not presented by a reductionist? Or would she call that an oxymoron?
charles sereno says:
And so was the flat earth theory taken very seriously by eminent scientists, as was the theory of the geo-centric universe.
And so was racial science taken very seriously by eminent evolutionary biologists.
The cooling earth theory (as opposed to continental drift and plate tectonics) was taken very seriously by eminent geologists.
The list goes on an on.
Your argument boils down to nothing more than an appeal to authority and power.
Science advances when a hypothesis is taken seriously by competent scientists and tested to ascertain its truth OR falsity. “Authoritative” and “powerful” are not synonymous with “eminent,” which is more often taken as “competent.” Your counter argument is specious.
So let me get this straight.
Greg Mankiw is certaintly an “eminent” economoist. As Lynn Parramore points out in anothe post today, he is “chairman and professor of economics at Harvard” and “one of the most influential economists in the country.”
And Mankiw’s theory that inequality is the result of merit is certaintly “taken very seriously by eminent economists.”
So, using your logic, the claim that Mankiw’s theory is arrant nonsense, because it is “taken very seriusly by eminent economists,” is absurd. I say bullshit.
And when you say “Science advances when a hypothesis is taken seriously by competent scientists and tested to ascertain its truth OR falsity,” you double down on the appeal to authority. What does “being taken seriously by competent scientists” have to do with the price of tea in China? The only thing that is important is whether the hypothesis is tested against the evidence to ascertain its truth or falsity. And if you believe all eminent scientists are competent in this regard, I have a nice piece of oceanfront property in Arizona that I’m sure you would love.
“So, using your logic, the claim that Mankiw’s theory is arrant nonsense, because it is “taken very seriusly by eminent economists,” is absurd. I say bullshit.” (from Mexico)
Say what? Let’s untangle your quote: you say that, by using my (Sereno’s) logic, a certain claim is absurd. And what is that claim? — “that Mankiw’s theory is arrant nonsense, because it is “taken very seriusly [sic] by eminent economists,”” If I may generalize — “A theory is nonsense because it is taken seriously by eminent theorists.” To repeat, you say that, by my logic, such a claim is absurd. I’m happy to agree completely with you. BTW, I have a collection of strawpersons you may be interested in.
There is, in addition, a category error, in that economics is not a science (although the orthodox adopt the trappings of science for rhetorical purposes).
Mexico wrote—
Well, Mexico, I don’t see much point to continuing this exchange, since you apparently you can read my mind. Apparently, you have discovered the key to absolute certain knowledge of reality; otherwise, why would you be so arrogant?
But, you and your extensive set of quotations of others are wrong.
As I wrote, the work of scientists, their views, and their affects on society are far more complex than described by your simplistic quotations and categories. You and your collection of social scientists forget—or just can’t undersand—that scientists are all different individuals, have different motivations for their research, and all interact differently with the press.
The vast majority of scientists in my experience try to produce reliable knowledge that is not influenced by any political view. The fact that some discoveries or ideas are appropriated by the press and serve particular interests doesn’t mean that was the intention of the scientists. The fact that some scientists become the lapdogs of the powerful doesn’t mean all scientists are lapdogs.
Instead, you assume all scientists are Richard Dawkins and therefore fall into the fallacy of hasty generalization: What may be true of Dawkins isn’t necessarily true of all scientists. But that would break the spell of your sources, since then you would have to actually demonstrate some first-hand knowledge to support your arguments.
From what I’ve read so far, I don’t think you can actually hold a discussion on this question without forcing everyone into some pigeonhole created by some social scientist that you quote. I have no interest in such a discussion, since there is no real discussion: the exchange merely becomes a barrage of isolated quotations from authors who have no actual experience of what they write about.
Maybe you should stop to consider your own appeals to power and your own motivations when making your arguments.
Re Afghanistan
It’s amazing how the MSM and Congress creatures are treating negotiations with the Taliban, aside from any merits. The Taliban affirms it intends to continue blowing up Americans (and Afghans), establish an Emirate, etc, etc. The outrage is conspicuosly absent. Imagine the uproar if the US deigned to cast so much as a glance at Hamas (angels compared to the Taliban)!
Most Americans are “tired” of Afghanistan, the deaths of armed forces personnel there is not front page news—-sad.
The NSA problem is probably even far worse than most of us had even feared–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DmN80yi5mo
NSA Whistleblower Russ Tice comes out with new details.
BTW, the site won’t let me post using my real name–Kurt Sperry– so I had to invent a pseudonym. I tried several times today and got the same result, the post seemed to go through, but never appeared. Whenever I tried to resubmit my posts it gave me the “Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!” nag page.
Can we fix this please?
Same thing has happened to me.
It is a WordPress problem. It used to be that if I mentioned the B-L-S or “st*tistics” in a comment, the comment wouldn’t post, which made it hard to discuss labor issues. One thing I did was to change words here and there in the comment and see if it would go through. The worst that would happen is it wouldn’t, but at least I wouldn’t get the annoying “You already said that” message. Another is to split the comment into parts. When a part doesn’t go through, that helps narrow down where the problem is. WordPress can be quite capricious.
BTW this happened on this comment, twice.
My first two or three comments I tried to post were all different and all were so short and so vanilla, I doubt any word filtering algorithm was tripped. Further the same verbatim message got through with the only variable being changed was the Name. The actual message content obviously (and oddly) had nothing to do with the problem.
As regards modern science, a question to consider is who funds it? (The government, the Pentagon/DARPA, “public”-corporate partnerships at universities, etc.) Re this last, look at the universities’ mad scramble to patent anything coming out of their departments, despite the fact that much of that funding still comes from public sources.
A lot of this public money is distributed by the grant writing process. The objectivity of this process is a fiction. Those making the decisions are gatekeepers. They steer money to those with similar ideas and agendas as their own. The students trained in these labs then do much the same reinforcing these approved lines of research. It doesn’t matter whether names and institutions are attached to the grant proposals during the evaluation process. Most of the evaluators can look at a grant proposal and identify the lab from which it originated. The result of this approach is a fair amount of control over the direction of research and the establishment of field related orthodoxies. These orthodoxies are reinforced further by gatekeeping in professional societies, conferences, publishing (both articles and books), and of course, tenure and promotions.
Running a particular experiment may not in itself be a political act. I leave that to others to assess, but everything leading up to and following from it is.
Nice set of links, good work.
“Obesity is (now) as disease” so that medical insurance can (now) be called upon to pay for all sorts of treatments that might have been harder to justify without this change.
Its so nice to see a website formed by someone who has not been led by an agenda other than FREEDOM. One who has thoroughly researched all the “truths” thrown at us and called it what it is…PROPAGANDA. It saddens me to see the American people being led around by the nose unknowingly and thinking they are in the know because they are in the RIGHT political party. They are lashing out with slurs against the very few who are concerned enough about their fellow person to DO something about it. Creating this site is welcomed by all of those who like myself, are saddened by a government so dirty that its willing to pit its own people against each other so as to keep the blame off the real enemy…. THEM.