Open Thread - Tuesday October 6, 2015

Good Morning, 99%'ers! Smile

I was getting ready to do my first walk in ten days and noticed we had no Open Thread this morning. Please use this Open Thread for your news and views.

I will be back later after my walk to check and post on it too.

Y'all have a great day! Biggrin

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mimi's picture

I just read navajo's diary about the Asheville weekend with Rev. Barber.
I tweeted it. Can't rec it anymore. The effort itself deserves to be recommended, no matter where you stand on it.
Haven't listened to all of it yet, but it gives you a better insight, who is who and who says what.

Have a beautiful day, all.

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gulfgal98's picture

The Asheville people are really great. randallt, dave houck, and Lamont Cranston have regularly done voter registration drives.

I wish I could have been there. Sad They are less than 40 miles away from me, but I had out of town company all weekend.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Unabashed Liberal's picture

today's OT, Nancy.

Having so many additional business/firm responsibilities, that I can hardly find my bearings, lately. Anyhoo, I have finally figured out that I'll have to 'organize my time.'

BTW, I've been posting at various NPR blogs using a Disqus ID for several years, but I just discovered that they have "Channels." It is an informal posting venue--like posting major comments. Anyhoo, on the day that I'm allotting myself time to comment over there, if there are any really good short diaries/comments in the Political News Section, I'll crosspost (here).

Below is a video that I've posted at EB.

[video:https://youtu.be/eepfRldptT8 width:560 height:315]
[Dog Train Fort Worth, Texas Famous, YouTube]

Here's a link to my EB comment, with an excerpt from a news article about this nice elderly gentleman and his rescue dogs.

Apparently, he and his Brother feed up to 30 species of animals, depending upon the season. (I read this in another article about him.)

Glad you're able to get in your walks, again, Nancy! This is the time of the year that we really enjoy walking 'the B.'

Have a wonderful evening, Everyone!

Mollie


"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."--Helen Keller
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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

hecate's picture

opening the otherwise closed thread. ; )

According to this creepy piece, the human attention span has declined from 12 seconds to 8.5 seconds over the past 15 years. At that rate, humans will have no attention span at all by mid-century.

Hello?

Hello?

Is there anybody in there?

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpFo_E9Fq2k]

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shaharazade's picture

social media, texting, tweeting, snap chatting, blogging and uh, oh yeah that machine that I'm using right now, the computer. Seriously too much input scrolling into your brain to hold it for more then 8.5 seconds. Now where did I file yesterday's work? Better go hunt it down before my attention gets diverted and Windows7 flings it in unlikely places, that I can't recall. Who needs an attention span when everything is filtered, filed and automated.

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hecate's picture

this piece says the human attention span is now less than that of the goldfish. All the various screens inhibit the ability to focus. They also reduce empathy. Brave new world.

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mimi's picture

from the article:

which shows that 91 per cent of teachers believe children’s attention spans are becoming shorter as they opt for screen-based activities over conventional reading.

Surely true also for adults.

Greenfield, author of ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century, is also concerned that on-line activities create more fragile egos. “Until recently, human beings have built up their identity from experiences. It’s internalised, robust, you know who you are," she says. “Now their identity is dependent on the online views of others."

Yes, right on, and your identity is dependent on the "recs" and "nice talk" by your readers. And the same way your identity can artificially be boosted and be an issue in itself, it can be crashed and destroyed. I mean, who in their right mind wants to get dependent on that?

Simply banning social media in the workplace will not address the problems, she says, although she recommends putting an emphasis on face-to-face meetings where all devices are turned off. “The trick is to devise an environment that’s more tempting and fulfilling than the cyber one."

Nice try. And good luck with being successful to offer an environment that is more tempting. I doubt very much that with the current structure of internet communication that will ever be possible.

See, why am I writing this? It was tempting. ... Yeah, and it's totally not fulfilling, once you get the picture.
Too bad.
I think it's a real bad decision to teach younger children under 14 to 16 via the computer. They might be computer literate, ack no way, they may be click and touch and cut and paste literate, but that's it. In no way are they prepared to deal with the cruelty of real life, if they have no human to human interaction to exchange their experiences and learn from others by talking to each other in person.

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hecate's picture

social media vs. face-to-face, there was a story today that said those who prefer to talk to people through various tubes, rather than to their faces, will get depressed, and need to take scary Medicine.

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shaharazade's picture

when she was about 12 or 13 used to carry on a conversation with me at the table while texting with her phone in her lap. She kept eye contact but her eyes were turned inward and quite blank. She recovered from her wired condition on her own at about 16. She now reads bound printed books and is like her dad a artisan craft person. Low tech, other then kilns and soldering torches. She going to Oregon College of Arts and Crafts and makes beautiful Dream Catchers.

So there is hope for young'uns who were raised wired to their devises. She says social media got boring as it wasn't real human contact. She even likes listening to her music in the air without buds. Her parents are both very humanistic and she was allowed some freedom unlike a lot of the fear riddled, protected suburban and now urban kids who lives seem extremely regulated and regimented by adults. Play dates, serious organized sports and no kids allowed to run free in the neighborhood. She was considered a hippie throwback in her high school.

Speaking of which I'm going to go take a walk and interact with some people. See you real empathetic people later.

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mimi's picture

realized how the powers that are, make you a slave of it and can seriously harm your life. Today I had to waste over 10 minutes time to pay for my parking over the phone instead with old fashioned coins. You can't do anything in person anymore. At least not in the work environment my son is in and or the one I was in for the last ten years. I think it really can be very harmful.

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hecate's picture

Are you saying people now pay to park over the phone? How does that even work?

Never mind. I don't want to know. Where I live, there is no paying to park at all. Whether on the phone, through a meter, to a man with his hand out, or whatever.

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gulfgal98's picture

We human beings seem to be making ourselves redundant. Artificial intelligence will make us totally unnecessary if climate change does not get us first.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

mimi's picture

I think we are not totally redundant ... Smile

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hecate's picture

coming. Here's a 666 machine flirting with Bob Dylan:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwh1INne97Q]

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MarilynW's picture

http://www.msf.ca/en/article/the-negative-impact-on-public-health-will-b...

"MSF expresses its dismay that TPP countries have agreed to United States government and multinational drug company demands that will raise the price of medicines for millions by unnecessarily extending monopolies and further delaying price-lowering generic competition. The big losers in the TPP are patients and treatment providers in developing countries. Although the text has improved over the initial demands, the TPP will still go down in history as the worst trade agreement for access to medicines in developing countries, which will be forced to change their laws to incorporate abusive intellectual property protections for pharmaceutical companies.

Obama has done a bad thing, again.

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To thine own self be true.

Shahryar's picture

along with Cornel West, Glenn Greenwald, you, me....anyone who has ever said anything that could be taken as a criticism of Obama. How dare they object to their hospital getting blown up? Don't they know it helps Trump??

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mimi's picture

and the dark abyss opens up in front of your eyes. How can we understand that?

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cybrestrike's picture

Great article in Naked Capitalism about the TPP:

TPP: It’s Not a Deal, It’s Not a Trade Deal, and It’s Not a Done Deal

Best takeaway from this whole thing?

Of course, nothing has been “signed,” and the deal has neither been “reached”, “sealed,” “struck,” or “agreed.” At best, what we have is a deal to try to make a deal; these headlines, and the mentality of the writers and editors, are all profoundly anti-democratic. As the BBC sheepishly admits:

Despite the success of the negotiations, the deal still has to be ratified by lawmakers in each country.

This fight isn't anywhere near over, no matter what the naysayers claim.

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shaharazade's picture

Your comments yesterday on the dkos TPP threads were outstanding.

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gulfgal98's picture

Cybrestrike always has great comments. Just not enough of them. Wink

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

gulfgal98's picture

I do not have much faith in our elected officials. Too many have been bought off, but many they will come to their senses that the TPP makes their own jobs worthless too since corporations will have extra national powers.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Looks like we are entering End Game

Reflecting the ever-growing sectarian nature of the Syrian Civil War, a group of 53 Saudi clerics, including some prominent Islamists, have issued a joint statement calling on the public to support a jihad against both the Assad government and their allies in Russia and Iran.
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joe shikspack's picture

from saudi arabia. normally the saudi government keeps their lunatics from going public with their fulminations, but given that this has been allowed to get out, it appears likely that the saudis want to remind putin especially that they can unleash the frothing fundies inside the russian federation territory at will as bandar bush has threatened before.

ultimately, it seems like a pretty hollow threat, since, despite saudi arabia's military build up, it is no match for russia's diplomatic, covert and conventional military resources.

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lotlizard's picture

I'm thinking of what happened in the 1990s in Chechnya and Bosnia.

In both cases, a majority of Muslims-by-culture whose outlook was originally quite modern, secular, and pan-European, was abandoned to a gruesome fate at the hands of a different cultural group bent on dominance.

Large numbers of innocent people died.

Abandonment by the outside world radicalized the survivors and drew in fundamentalist Muslim volunteers from abroad.

These volunteers came with an implied sales pitch: "The West and its friends talk and preach. But when you are being slaughtered, when you are the victims of state terrorism, who actually shows up? Who can you always count on to defend you? Not NATO. Not the West. Only your Muslim brothers™."

Under pressure to disprove the pitch's point, NATO eventually did intervene in Bosnia and Kosovo.

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Why not? Politics

A weekend US attack on a hospital full of civilians outside the Afghan city of Kunduz has sparked international condemnation, with the aid group that was operating the facility, Doctors Without Borders, urging an immediate independent investigation with the presumption that a war crime had been committed.
That’s unlikely to happen, however, as the White House insists bombing the hospital wasn’t “a war crime,” and Gen. Campbell dancing around the issue, claiming simultaneously that the attack was intention, and the result of an Afghan government request, but that the civilian deaths were “accidental.”
Huge civilian tolls in US attacks in Afghanistan have been a common occurrence throughout the 14-year occupation, and legal experts say it’s very unlikely that the International Criminal Court will look to step in on the incident, believing it would be too “politically sensitive” for the US.

We intentionally blew up a hospital, but killing civilians in the hospital was accidental.
yeh, that makes sense.

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Atrocities happen

On Dec. 26, 2009, a U.S. Special Operations team flew from Kabul to Ghazi Khan village in the Narang district of Kunar province. They attacked three houses, where they killed two adults and eight children. Seven of the children were handcuffed before they were shot. The youngest was 11 or 12, three more were 12, and one was 15. Both the United Nations and the Afghan government conducted investigations and confirmed all the details of the attack.
U.S. officials conducted their own inquiry, but no report was published and no U.S. military or civilian officials were held accountable. Finally, more than five years later, a New York Times report on Joint Special Operations Command’s (JSOC) Seal Team 6 named it as the U.S. force involved. But JSOC operations are officially secret and, to all practical purposes, immune from accountability. As a senior U.S. officer told the Times, “JSOC investigates JSOC, that’s part of the problem.”
Accountability for the U.S. attack on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz on Saturday, killing at least 22 people, is likely to be just as elusive. The bilateral security agreement that President Karzai refused to sign, but which President Ghani signed in September 2014, provides total immunity from Afghan law for U.S. forces and officials. So whoever should be held legally responsible for the massacre at the hospital will only be subject to accountability under U.S. military and civilian legal systems, which routinely fail to prosecute anyone for similar war crimes.
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gulfgal98's picture

No amount of white washing will change that. Now if the international courts will charge US officials (from the President on down) for it and try them, we might actually see some real justice.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

hecate's picture

the US (Oceania), Russia (Eurasia), nor China (Eastasia) recognize ICC jurisdiction. In 2002, in the full frenzy of Bush-time, the Congress even approved legislation enabling the president to apply military force to free any United States person held by the Court. This became known as "The Hague Invasion Act."

The European Court of Human Rights, to which Russia is a party, determined that Russia committed war crimes in Chechnya. The Russians just shrugged.

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gulfgal98's picture

I am just screaming at the clouds, as I have been known to do.

I guess what frustrates me is just how far we have fallen. We have lost our humanity and I am desperately trying to remind people of that.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

mimi's picture

political entity bound by laws we create and abuse, have. The lack of humanity shows its true colors, just when you see it in person harming another individual. Then it may initiate in yourself the urge to help and fight for the rights of the abused person. If you get to know about the same abuse just over the internet through blogs or videos online, it may initiate other people bullying you, if you don't produce enough good "words" of empathy and humanity, but it's not doing anything further. The same thing is true for the words of support you gave. It really didn't help the abused person. It's artificial talk in the clouds.

Don't you think it would be great to be a lawyer and actually concentrate on one case and fight for one person's rights on paper and real life meetings ? At least that's for real.

If you were to make a list for which issues we would actually do something in person in real life and may be even risk something with it, I wonder what kind of priorities people have. In theory I am supportive of a lot of issues online, but it's another thing to act in person and go through the hardship of doing it. It's also a problem because each activists somehow believes that his own priority issue should be yours too. That basically distracts you from focusing on one thing. I kind of don't like that.

Ahh, it's so nice to be not active, heh. No activism, no problems. Don't worry, be happy. Don't learn, stay ignorant. What a blissful life that could be ... /s

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mimi's picture

posting it twice... I thought I knew the trick ... but helas ... today I am so un-tricky.

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MarilynW's picture

They know the facts more than anyone. Another hit to MSF is the TPP because it will increase the price of drugs around the world, countries will have no control. This will hurt mostly poor countries in which MSF is based. It's the perfect neoliberal bow to the multinational drug industry.

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To thine own self be true.

this is sad

Fast forward to 2015, this past Saturday, when Bernie Sanders, an increasingly viable contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, held one of his biggest campaign rallies to date, drawing more than 20,000 people to an event at the Boston convention center. Among those visitors were a number of young activists from Boston Students for Justice in Palestine, who were curious about Sanders’ position on the occupied territories. They had a sign with them; in a playful nod to one of Sanders’ campaign slogans, it simply asked, “Will Ya Feel The Bern For Palestine?” The activists say they were well-received by other Sanders supporters in the crowd.

But staffers working for a candidate widely viewed as one of the most progressive members of the Senate were apparently not happy. Security was made aware of a threat: Some students who support Sanders were holding a sign with a question on it. A tactic right out of the Bush campaign “playbook” went into action.

“They told us to either put the sign away or leave,” said Sana Hashmani, one of the student activists. “We asked why, and they said that Bernie’s campaign staff had said the sign had to go.”

There had been no signs of trouble previously. The pro-Palestine group was doing nothing unusual — except, perhaps, for daring to question Sanders about territories occupied by Israel, of which Sanders has been a not-entirely-progressive supporter. “When we got there and entered the overflow space with our sign, people were supporting us and taking pictures, and other people had signs talking about various social issues as well,” Hashmani said.

In a brief cell phone video of the incident, security staff can be seen threatening to arrest the students if they didn’t leave the premises.

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Shahryar's picture

my new thing (maybe not so new): try to avoid politics and focus on day to day life, which can be beautiful and real.

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MarilynW's picture

but I'm getting involved in a local group to save city trees. Something specific and important to me.

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To thine own self be true.

hecate's picture

The actual real world is rarely as fraught as any random tube.

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link

Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine say they have agreed to postpone until February disputed elections that had been planned for the next few weeks.

France and Germany want peace

He underestimated the determination of France and Germany to get the Ukrainian matter out of the way in the most efficient manner possible. After five hours of talks in the Elysee Palace, the Morel plan was imposed on Ukraine in a form more beneficial to Putin. First, Ukraine must design the special election law in consultation with Moscow and the separatists. Then, it will have to pass it and amnesty the separatist leaders so they can run for local legislatures. In 80 days' time, after the passage of the law, the election should be held. Then, if international observers declare it acceptable, Ukraine is supposed to regain control of its border with Russia. Hollande told reporters after the talks that wasn't likely to happen this year, because of the need to draft the legislation and properly prepare the election.

This is a slap in Poroshenko's face. It's almost politically impossible for him to push a Moscow-approved election bill through Ukraine's parliament. Poroshenko has had trouble getting the legislature even to approve a tame constitutional amendment allowing for a special status of the rebel-held regions; riots broke out outside the parliament building during the vote and police suffered casualties.

Peace in Ukraine must not fit into the meme, otherwise people would be talking about it.

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just got home from work. Thanks gulfgal for covering today's OT, much appreciated.

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gulfgal98's picture

I hope things are right in your world tonight.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

tired but cool, thanks gg.

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